Forum Moderators: phranque
Lately, I've become a lot more nervous about ANY identifiable footprint. In the last few months alone, we've seen penalties apparently based on Zeus code and on WebPositionGold traffic logging code, for example. Neiher of these footprints is conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, i.e., one could be using Zeus to manage a quality directory, or WPG to analyze pages but not generate doorways or run automated queries on engines that don't like them.
I'm now wondering what could be next? I use blog software for content management on a couple of sites. It works fine, but could blog software be the next automated witch hunt by Google or another SE? What about forum software? Or online catalog systems?
One thing I'm doing is being certain to customize directories, file names, etc. Often, SE filters are fairly crude (themeindex, blueline.gif, etc.) I used to get a bit sloppy since troubleshooting tends to be much easier when defaults are used, but now I customize everything both for security reasons and witch hunt protection.
Going beyond the obvious, though, I'm at the point where I've begun tweaking code to take out author references and the like. I hate to do this, because providing appropriate credit to those who make my life easier is something I'm happy to do, license agreements notwithstanding. I'm attempting to assuage my guilt by making sure I've made payments as appropriate on shareware.
Is anyone else wrestling with this dilemma, or am I getting carried away? As Intel's Andy Grove said, "Only the paranoid survive."
I agree with that!
Looks like you are aleardy taking steps to protect yourself, good move imho.
