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Re: Potentially Serious Bug Discovered in Google Reader

Google Reader II — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:26:02 -0000

I have a bug report too. Didn't find anything on it and it's a very annoying problem. Some feeds are rendered useless.

Google Reader doesn't show articles from feedburner feeds anymore. If clicked on a feedburner feed in the left pane the URL box becomes something like https://www.google.com/read...
and Google Reader will reload completely without showing anything in the main 'window'. It is obvious a part of the URL is repeated where it shouldn't.

I've seen this effect on several PC's now from several networks so it is not a local issue. This problem started a couple of weeks ago. All feedburner feeds seem to have this problem. Not sure whether this is a Feedburner bug or a Google Reader bug. Both are Google.

Where can I report bugs to Google anyway?

Re: Potentially Serious Bug Discovered in Google Reader

rizzn — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:48:28 -0000

if they don't fix this hole, however, april 1 will be crazy next year.

Re: Potentially Serious Bug Discovered in Google Reader

Ryan Svoboda — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:09:09 -0000

You are completely right mrshl, and I'm sure that is what the Google Reader team had in mind when they released the article.

The fact I found disconcerting is that I could change a small portion of the original text, and it would get passed off as the original article to my friends, who can't see what changes I have made.

I would not consider this an extremely serious bug, since the people who could use this to their advantage would likely never abuse this, as it would cause a huge blow to their reputation if it was ever discovered.

Re: Potentially Serious Bug Discovered in Google Reader

rizzn — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:48:09 -0000

You're right, mrshl, to a certain extent. Up until now, though, without the ability to edit, Google Reader has redefined what a link-blog with the shared items feed, and up until now, there hasn't been an ability to edit at all.

I trust the folks I read linkblogs from, but if I were to expand my reading list by perusing lists available from ReadBurner or RSSMeme, I might not, as I don't know those people (I have spoken to and know fairly well everyone on my current link-blog reading list).

Re: Potentially Serious Bug Discovered in Google Reader

mrshl — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:04:24 -0000

This is not a bug at all. It's the same thing you can do ANYTIME you link to someone else's content.

Just to be clear, Google Reader will not alter the source's content; you're only editing what YOU put in YOUR link blog.

It's not any different than linking to and quoting content on your blog. Which we do all the time. The question with Google Reader's new feature is the same question you always have to ask yourself:

Do you trust the source? The person who's running the link blog? Do you trust THAT PERSON?

Well, do ya punk?

Re: Potentially Serious Bug Discovered in Google Reader

Ravi Karandeekar — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:52:03 -0000

Yes, this is very serious bug. I am worried about my feeds. There is a slow down in Pune real estate. Hope nobody takes advantage of this bug and makes it worst.

Re: Potentially Serious Bug Discovered in Google Reader

Benjamin Golub — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:22:17 -0000

No worries about the note importing in RSSmeme. I noticed you could do this too and so notes are first escaped (which is all I really had to do) and then passed through a striptags filter (so people don't see things like in the notes on the site).