Tuesday
May262009
Feedburner is malicious now?
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 1:04AM
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 1:04AM
This is more of a complaint than anything else but it affects the show so I hope you'll bear with me. PhotoWalkthrough uses Feedburner for the RSS feed that makes the podcast work. I've recently been made aware of a problem with Feedburner's servers.
One of my viewers got in touch to say that he couldn't download my shows in iTunes. After some diagnosis back and forth between me and him we discovered it was because he's been downloading a HOSTS file that contains lists of "undesirable" domains and links them back to localhost. This essentially makes it impossible for his machine (and anyone else that uses this HOSTS file) to make contact with those domains. The intention is to stop companies like doubleclick and other ad/spam sites from tracking you and from sending you ads. Sadly feeds.feedburner.com is on that list. The hosts file in question is available from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/ but the maintainer of the list pointed out that feeds.feedburner.com is also on many other similar lists. He pointed me at this URL to prove the point:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22127.0.0.1++feeds.feedburner.com%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
So sadly it seems that feedburner is now considered a malicious site. This is obviously a big problem for those of us that have feed URLs that have traditionally gone through feedburner. To our viewers and listeners it simply looks like our show has died and stopped being served. iTunes gives an error saying it can't contact the server. Most people wouldn't even bother to get in touch with us - they'd just assume that the podcast was no more.
So I'm faced with a dilemma. On the one hand I don't want to have to change my feed URL. That seems significantly risky to me. I say if it ain't broke don't fix it. My first instinct is to fight the inclusion of feedburner on these HOSTS file lists. But if that's lots of lists - that's a huge battle that I can't win. On the other hand if there are a number of people out there that can't get my show then perhaps feedburner *is* broke so I'll have to change it and face the attendant risk.
Either way it seems that someone just dropped a huge pile of extra work in my lap. And that someone is GOOGLE. First they bought DoubleClick. Then they bought feedburner and broke it by putting doubleclick style tracking code in the pages. That hurts ALL the podcasters and bloggers that were using Feedburner who have now gone dark to part of their audience.
"Don't be evil" my ass.
One of my viewers got in touch to say that he couldn't download my shows in iTunes. After some diagnosis back and forth between me and him we discovered it was because he's been downloading a HOSTS file that contains lists of "undesirable" domains and links them back to localhost. This essentially makes it impossible for his machine (and anyone else that uses this HOSTS file) to make contact with those domains. The intention is to stop companies like doubleclick and other ad/spam sites from tracking you and from sending you ads. Sadly feeds.feedburner.com is on that list. The hosts file in question is available from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/ but the maintainer of the list pointed out that feeds.feedburner.com is also on many other similar lists. He pointed me at this URL to prove the point:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22127.0.0.1++feeds.feedburner.com%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
So sadly it seems that feedburner is now considered a malicious site. This is obviously a big problem for those of us that have feed URLs that have traditionally gone through feedburner. To our viewers and listeners it simply looks like our show has died and stopped being served. iTunes gives an error saying it can't contact the server. Most people wouldn't even bother to get in touch with us - they'd just assume that the podcast was no more.
So I'm faced with a dilemma. On the one hand I don't want to have to change my feed URL. That seems significantly risky to me. I say if it ain't broke don't fix it. My first instinct is to fight the inclusion of feedburner on these HOSTS file lists. But if that's lots of lists - that's a huge battle that I can't win. On the other hand if there are a number of people out there that can't get my show then perhaps feedburner *is* broke so I'll have to change it and face the attendant risk.
Either way it seems that someone just dropped a huge pile of extra work in my lap. And that someone is GOOGLE. First they bought DoubleClick. Then they bought feedburner and broke it by putting doubleclick style tracking code in the pages. That hurts ALL the podcasters and bloggers that were using Feedburner who have now gone dark to part of their audience.
"Don't be evil" my ass.
Reader Comments (6)
I may be wrong here, but is this host file not just a text file stored on your pc? And, as such, can be edited to remove the feedburner entry? Something to ask of somebody more knowledgable than myself.
Yes absolutely it's just a text file. The problem is that most people wouldn't realize that the reason why PhotoWalkthrough wasn't working any more had anything to do with the hosts file they've installed. It would just look like PhotoWalkthrough had gone away. In fact this is exactly how we discovered this problem. A PhotoWalkthrough viewer thought there was something wrong with our feed. It look a lot of effort to figure out what was stopping it working. Most people wouldn't do all that work to figure it out. They'd just unsubscribe.
Use the custom domain feature (I forget what they call it) so it burns to feeds.photowalkthrough.com ;-)
Indeed there are a variety of solutions to this problem including using one of the other feedburner URLs, or switching to producing and hosting my own feed files. I've no lack of solutions. The source of my annoyance is that ALL of those solutions require me as the feed owner not only to field the complaints and queries but also diagnose and understand the fault then undertake one or more time consuming corrective actions. In short the person who elected to add Feedburner to that blocked list has caused a lot of grief and extra work for a lot of people and I'm one of them. I would much rather be spending my time producing content for my viewers than playing IT support and tidying up messes made by the people who run these lists who couldn't even muster a little courtesy in their responses to my emails.
Your podcasts disappeared for me too (running iTunes on an iMac). I have read your explanation of why it is a problem but not sure what the solution is?
I've changed the feed URL on the site here but probably you're still trying to use the old feed address, which is the one that has been blocked by your ad blocking list. There are two possible solutions. First you could stop using that list. I'd like to remind you that the ads are what enable content providers to make their content available to you for no cost. By blocking ads you take away their ability to make money. Eventually something has to give. But if you don't want to stop using the ad blocking list then you could subscribe to the new feed address, which is http://feedproxy.google.com/photowalkthrough" rel="nofollow">http://feedproxy.google.com/photowalkthrough. Sorry I don't mean to get all preachy on you.