Why You Should Subscribe to Your Own Feed…in Google Reader

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I was reading MindValley Lab’s latest post in my feed reader this morning and noticed a set of 19 very spammy links right after the first paragraph:

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Thinking it was part of what Amir was trying to communicate, I kept reading.  Turns out, though, they weren’t part of the post at all, and knowing the MindValley Labs folks, they weren’t put there on purpose.  “Typical WordPress hack,” I thought.

Digging deeper, though, I realized this hack had two interesting twists to it.  First, the links had been inserted directly into the post, not into the footer of the site (or elsewhere).  Second, you can’t actually see the links on the site.

Why?  Notice the style attribute on the <div> tag.  It positions the <div> way off screen.  Looking at the post on their site, there’s no evidence that anything is amiss.

Reading the post through Google Reader, though, the links are more than obvious because Google Reader doesn’t respect the styling.  They show up right in the post where they’re placed.

Do other readers show them, too?  Not sure.  I’d love to hear from others who use something besides Google Reader before MindValley fixes the problem.  (I’ve let them know about the hack, so it should be fixed soon.)

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