To blog or not to blog, that is the question

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

It dismays me sometimes when I see some bloggers and the stuff they write. Only this morning, I was looking at someone’s blog and he was talking about a security hole that he had discovered in Gmail. He had found a vulnerability where he could see everyone’s Gmail address which is obviously a spammer’s wet dream.

Now in this case, the responsible course of action would be to not go into specific detail on his blog but to instead say “I’m going to contact Gmail now” and then do so. He could contact Google, tell them what he has found, and help them plug the hole. He would then earn serious brownie points with Google and maybe feel good about himself in the process.

But does he do this? Of course not. Instead, he gleefully details step by step what he has found and he details in process how you can find it too. By doing so, he has put at risk every Gmail account out there and the only people who will be happy with this jerk today will be the spammers. To add insult to injury, his blog is hosted on Google’s Blogspot!