John Porcaro’s weblog looks fine tonight, nothing odd. The state of his feed is a completely different matter though.
Behind his back, someone’s done a dasterdly deed – replacing John’s xml (normally provided in a proper fashion by the folks at FeedBurner) with their own. A file full of vile stuff – adverts for phenobarbital, vicoprofen, xanax and valium.
These are not the writings of an Xbox Marketing Rock Star, I assure you. Something untoward is afoot. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred.
Rogers Cadenhead once refered to the use of Feedburner as playing with fire, warning that trouble could come from letting someone else control your data. His concern was centered around Feedburner’s stability, “what position will FeedBurner users be left in if it goes offline, goes pay, or cancels the account,” he asked. I see this as a much more dangerous problem – what control have those users given up, how easily can their data be fixed in a case such as John’s?
[edit] Apparently there are two different feeds claiming to be John’s. The one I had in my reader – which as far as I know hasn’t changed – is full of drug ads. The “right” one is correct, containing all his recent posts. I don’t know where or how the change happened.