Breaking News: jwest.wordpress.com
2008 February 21
http://jwest.wordpress.com
He’s back but with no archive of previous posts. Will he take advantage of Bob MacDonald’s archive of old drjimwest.wordpress.com posts (Dr Jim’s posts still on bloglines)?
And I still haven’t received a satisfactory explanation for this disappearance. As I said in my post this morning, there is no way to delete a blog unless you also have access to the person’s email account. What’s going on here, folks? Split personality? Dr. West and Mr. Hyde? The ghost of Zwingli floats over all of this somehow…
I am flapdoodled! Gobsmacked! Pifflated! Defenestrated! I could go on!
is this what a blog enema looks like? has jim had a blog colonoscopy that required purging?
On the Biblical Studies list Jim said:
Mystery solved. Which is kind of a shame because I do enjoy a good conspiracy theory.
If that’s true it is scary. Personally, I thought it was the dog.
I’m curious about the email spoofing, not least because I am keen to avoid something like this happening to my blog. I had thought that email spoofing was about sending email rather than receiving email, so I am curious to learn more about these hacking techniques, which appear to break new ground — we should all be extra vigilant. See, e.g., Wikipedia (not Jim’s favourite resource!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoof_email “E-mail spoofing is a term used to describe fraudulent email activity in which the sender address and other parts of the email header are altered to appear as though the email originated from a different source.”
Do not throw yourself out a window over this. I’m urging you.
The only reason Ker wishes to be defenestrated is to atone for having deleted Jim West’s blog!
Mark, you’re right about spoofing. Spoofing makes the e-mail appear to come from a source that didn’t send it. Spoofing isn’t about intercepting an e-mail headed for someone else.
However, if you knew the password for a WordPress-hosted account, I suppose that you could change the account information to show a different e-mail address. Then you could delete the blog and the confirmation e-mail would be sent to the new, revised address.
I am only guessing, because I host my own blog; I use WordPress software but not on their servers. But it makes sense to me.
Again, that’s not possible because it would require email confirmation from the previous email address. There is still mystery aplenty here even aside from my conspiracy theories.
But if Jim’s e-mail is webmail, or has an alternative webmail interface (and that means most e-mail systems), then anyone who knows his password can log in to it and reply to the confirmation request. Anyway, John Hobbins can tell us if that is how he did it.
Friends, I’d like us to lay this issue to rest. While questions remain, Jim has said that this is how it happened and I feel it’s better not to create any more hullabaloo about it. Out of respect for Jim and without knowing the full story I think we can just leave it. A complete blog deletion is pretty drastic and however it happened an appropriate response would simply be to be grateful he is once again blogging and to pray for Jim. His blogging is a blessing and a curse both for Jim and his readers.
The lingering concern is with regard to email spoofing and the fears other bloggers might have regarding their own blogs being victimized. Simply put: Do your backups and change your password. There are many ways for a blog to be brought down but most of them are results of the blogger’s carelessness or stupidity.
If my blog were deleted I would just choose a new blog address, restore the backup and carry on. WordPress is an excellent system for allowing very robust backups that even include user comments. I’m not sure how easy it is on Blogger. When I left Blogger for WordPress some of my posts lost photo links but in general it was pretty easy so I suspect that it’s possible to make good backups of a Blogger blog as well. Typepad and the rest probably have similar systems.