Recently, we've noted a number of complaints about Blogger commenting, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.My comments all use a "noreply" email address, instead of my actual email address. How do I have people email their replies to my comments?
This appears to be one more way which Blogger is trying to safeguard our Blogger accounts and blogs, from malicious, technically astute blog thieves.
Some time ago, we observed that this precaution appeared to be unique to Blogger accounts which used Google and Google+ profiles - and did not involve Blogger profiles.
It appears that this is now universal, and includes Blogger profiles, as well as Google / Google+ profiles. It's likely that the noreply email addresses are being offered to keep more blog readers from, inadvertently, exposing their email addresses to email mining techniques.
In remembering the long ago discovered "nice blog" spam, it's possible that "nice blog" spam was originally developed to help the spammers gather email addresses, using very innovative technique.
All that a spammer has to do is to post a "nice blog" comment, select "Email follow-up comments to me" - then watch as the Inbox fills up with follow up comments from bloggers, willingly giving up their email addresses to every stranger also selecting "Email follow-up comments to me", in that comment thread.
The people willingly providing their email addresses, to the world in general, are perfect targets for hackers later trying to brute force access to the Blogger accounts, starting from the provided email addresses. Use of the "no-reply" email address prevents this type of mischief - and reduces the workload of Google Security, as they would otherwise have to verify account / blog integrity, for hacked accounts and blogs.
For even more protection (which is not a bad idea, in any case), consider using Google 2-Step Verification, to protect your Blogger / Google account from hacking.
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Today, we see, in Blogger Buzz: Connect to Google+, a long awaited announcement, from Blogger.Starting today, if you have linked your blog to your Google+ account you will be presented with a prefilled Google+ share box immediately after publishing a post. The share box will contain a +snippet of your post that you can share with your circles on Google+.
So, this is my test of the new feature.
This was first a live test, using my main Blogger account. I spent the better part of one hour migrating my Blogger account to use my Google+ profile. Having done that, I now compose my first Blogger blog post, while using my Google+ profile - and now, I will see how well Blogger and Google+ are integrated.
From looking closely at the picture in the Buzz post, it looks like the promised popup window, "Share on Google+", is a feature that's built into The New GUI. Since I remain underwhelmed by the New GUI, this Blogger account remains under the Classic GUI. And, having hit "Publish Post", I saw no new "Share on Google+" popup window.
To use the Blogger to Google+ Automatic Sharing, you must do three things.- From your Classic GUI Dashboard, or Settings wizard, select "Try the updated Blogger interface".
- From the gear icon, select "Connect to Google+".
- In Settings - Posts and comments, set "Share to Google+" to "Yes".
Fortunately, it's possible to use the Share option in the Posts list, for the post in question, and share this post from another Blogger account that is in my main Google+ account's circles. Using the "Extended Circles" target, from my test Blogger account, got the job done. Looking in my Stream, I see the new post snippet, shared as promised.
You'll note that "Share to Google+" will, by default, share to the main Google+ profile name. If you have created Google+ Pages (alternate identities) attached to your Google+ Profile, you can share to a Google+ Page.
This process is not truly automatic. If completely automatic, there should be some mapping of a Label in the post, to select one or more pre chosen Circles. When this post was published, FeedBurner redirected this post, from the posts feed, to my Twitter account. Surely, Google+ could provide the same possibility.
But, what we have today is an excellent start.
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