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RSS feed hacked? Or not?

NWMtnGuyNWMtnGuy Registered Users Posts: 88 Big grins
edited July 9, 2008 in SmugMug Support
I'm not an expert on RSS so it's possible I'm concerned about something for no reason. I just tried a handful of Google searches to find out where my page shows up and I came across a link for the following URL:

http://photos.miseast.org/hack/feed.mg?Type=search&Data=glaciers&format=rss200

This appears to be a feed for photos on Smugmug matching the word "glaciers". Just to be sure, I went to the Smugmug homepage and searched for "glaciers" and then clicked the RSS feed to get this URL:

http://smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=search&Data=glaciers&format=rss200

The resulting RSS feed is almost exactly the same as the one from the first link. I guess I'm a little bit concnered because the first URL is not from a Smugmug domain, but maybe that's entirely normal. Can someone tell me if I should care about this or not?

Thanks,
Dale

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    NWMtnGuyNWMtnGuy Registered Users Posts: 88 Big grins
    edited July 8, 2008
    Hmmm... just found another one:

    http://www.andtherewaslight.net/hack/feed.mg?Data=glacier&Type=search&format=rss200

    Maybe I just don't understand something fundamental about how RSS works (which is entirely possible), but it seems strange to find these feeds through URLs other than Smugmug or my own domain name. headscratch.gif
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    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited July 8, 2008
    Sorry, I'm not following, what's strange?
    Andy

    Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
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    NWMtnGuyNWMtnGuy Registered Users Posts: 88 Big grins
    edited July 8, 2008
    Sorry, I just looked at my earlier message and it probably wasn't clear. The thing I was concerned about was that MY images are showing up through a feed from a site I have never heard of. Those non-Smugmug URLs contain MY photos and I'm trying to understand how they are getting there.

    I kind of assumed that an RSS feed containing images from my Smugmug site would have a "smugmug.com" URL or my custom URL. Some of the feeds I posted above are coming through URLs I have never heard of, yet they contain MY images. I don't understand why that's the case.

    Like I said, I have never really used RSS and probably don't understand something really basic, but it just seems strange that my images are being fed via an RSS feed through a site I have never heard of.
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    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited July 8, 2008
    NWMtnGuy wrote:
    Sorry, I just looked at my earlier message and it probably wasn't clear. The thing I was concerned about was that MY images are showing up through a feed from a site I have never heard of. Those non-Smugmug URLs contain MY photos and I'm trying to understand how they are getting there.

    I kind of assumed that an RSS feed containing images from my Smugmug site would have a "smugmug.com" URL or my custom URL. Some of the feeds I posted above are coming through URLs I have never heard of, yet they contain MY images. I don't understand why that's the case.

    Like I said, I have never really used RSS and probably don't understand something really basic, but it just seems strange that my images are being fed via an RSS feed through a site I have never heard of.
    It's a public feed of keywords...
    Andy

    Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
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    PBolchoverPBolchover Registered Users Posts: 909 Major grins
    edited July 8, 2008
    Andy wrote:
    It's a public feed of keywords...

    But does that mean that other people are allowed to re-publish the feeds on their own site?
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    AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited July 8, 2008
    PBolchover wrote:
    But does that mean that other people are allowed to re-publish the feeds on their own site?
    They're not publishing it, google is. DUnno why the google would put a publick feed after a usernickname or custom domain name.
    Andy

    Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
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    PBolchoverPBolchover Registered Users Posts: 909 Major grins
    edited July 9, 2008
    I've finally twigged what is going on!

    The sites mentions in the URLs: photos.miseast.org, www.andtherewaslight.net, etc are actually domains that point to pro-user's smugmug accounts.

    And it's possible from anyone's smugmug account to get an RSS feed of the entirety of smugmug, for a specified search.

    Combine the two together, and you can get an RSS feed of a specified search of smugmug, from URLs that look nothing like the smugmug URL.


    My next question is the following: does allowing RSS feeds of the entirety of smugmug being published under a "vanity domain" give undue advertising of that domain, when the photos in the RSS feed belong to a completely different domain?
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    NWMtnGuyNWMtnGuy Registered Users Posts: 88 Big grins
    edited July 9, 2008
    OK, this is starting to make sense to me. It hadn't occurred to me that those other URLs were other Smugmug Pro users. So essentially what I was seeing were Smugmug feeds passed through different vanity URLs. OK, I can live with that.

    In a way I don't mind that my photos are showing up in those feeds because if anyone clicks on one of the links it drives traffic to my site. I was just worried that maybe someone else was publishing my photos online somewhere, when in reality they are feeding from Smugmug.

    Dale
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    richpepprichpepp Registered Users Posts: 360 Major grins
    edited July 9, 2008
    FWIW this isn't a feed that was created by us (miseast.org). We do flood prevention work but there aren't any 'glacier' keywords anywhere that I can see. I wonder if someone else somewhere is using a feed to look for glacier pics coming up on our site? ne_nau.gif

    Anyway, I also wonder if part of the worry is the use of the word 'hack' in the URL?

    Best wishes to all

    Richard
    Mission East Help for Nepal - Paintings of Scottish landscapes
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    NWMtnGuyNWMtnGuy Registered Users Posts: 88 Big grins
    edited July 9, 2008
    richpepp wrote:
    FWIW this isn't a feed that was created by us (miseast.org). We do flood prevention work but there aren't any 'glacier' keywords anywhere that I can see. I wonder if someone else somewhere is using a feed to look for glacier pics coming up on our site? ne_nau.gif

    Anyway, I also wonder if part of the worry is the use of the word 'hack' in the URL?

    Best wishes to all

    Richard
    Thanks, Richard. Yeah, the world 'hack' in the URL caught my attention at first, but then I noticed it was in feeds with the Smugmug URL so I assumed it was normal for RSS feeds. (Remember, I'm an RSS novice!)

    I suppose this brings up another question -- Is there a Smugmug feed out there which uses my custom domain (dalebaskin.com), and that I am totally unaware of, that is showing off a bunch of photos from another user's Smugmug page? I can see a possible problem with this: The feed could potentially be showing photos that I either find objectionable or that I don't want to be associated with my site. Examples might include photos that are sexually suggestive or photos from another photographer trying to sell pictures that compete with mine. In the latter case I would hate to have those photos found through MY domain name. :nono

    Dale
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