Automatic Sharing Of New Posts, To Google+, Is Here

Almost 3 years ago, Blogger introduced easy sharing of new Blogger posts, to Google+.

This week, they took the next step. For those blogs associated with a Google+ page or profile, you can share new posts, Publicly, automatically.

Starting today you can automatically share your blog posts publicly to Google+ — as soon as you publish them, with no additional clicks.

Just select "Automatically share after posting", and you're ready to share new posts, publicly, as soon as they are published.
When you share automatically, it's absolute and immediate.

• Everything gets shared to Public - no Circles selection.
• No Comment addition.

But, for those who like a no option sharing, it's here.

We see in Google Help: Automatically share to Google+, some interesting advice.

Automatic sharing to Google+ is enabled by default on all public blogs linked to Google+ pages or profiles.

If you setup a new blog, you might do well to check the setting, before publishing your first few posts.

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Blogger Comments Being Posted Using An Anonymous Blogger Email Address

Some Blogger blog owners use their Blogger blogs as the center of their peer to peer networking life.

Many blog readers are expected to post comments - and to leave their email addresses, as part of their message or profile, to allow direct contact. Long ago, I used the email address of my commenters, as part of an easy "Contact Me" form, on this blog.

Recently, we've been noting that Blogger comments don't always include a useful email addresses - many comments simply describe the commenter as

noreply-comment@blogger.com

Not all blog owners - and readers - appreciate this change.

When I leave a comment using my google profile, it isn't linking my profile with my email address. How do I get my email address properly displayed?

and

Why do so many comments, published to my blog, show the email address of "noreply-comment@blogger.com"? How do I email my readers?

For some time, we've known of the dangers of revealing your email address to the world, in general.

Blogger blog owners have been a known special risk, with their email addresses. Google developed Google+, with the Google+ profile, to allow everybody to network with their friends - both old and new - without the risk of revealing one's email address.

Google+ replaces email completely. You can share comments, messages, photos, and videos with anybody, in a self contained universe - and you can define your own, personal universes. This leaves the need to reveal your email address completely unnecessary (though you can use email, if you wish, without knowing anyone's address - or revealing yours).

After Google+ became popular, Blogger added the option to link our Blogger blogs with our Google+ profiles. Blogger profiles, based on Google+, are cleaner, and use the Google+ displays to update.

To encourage people to use Google+ for peer to peer networking activity, and to make our Blogger accounts and blogs safer, Blogger has eliminated our email addresses from all outside correspondence - including when we publish comments on Blogger (and non Blogger) blogs, using a Google+ based Blogger profile.

If we publish a comment on somebody's blog, and the blog owner has enabled comment moderation or notification, our comment shows up in the email inbox of the blog owner - but with our email address displayed as "noreply-comment@blogger.com".

With email addresses not displayed, this helps protect our Blogger account names from becoming unnecessarily revealed. Blog owner - reader comment communication is still possible - but again, without the email address of the reader being known.

Some time ago, I discovered an odd type of comment spam, which I termed "nice Blog" spam.

Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

This spam, from what I can tell, has been published by the millions, in various blog comments. It's likely that this particular spam is being published as a very imaginative form of email address mining, and recently became even more imaginatively produced.

All that the spammer has to do is publish a spam comment, and select the option to "Send me replies". Any comments published later, and including the commenters actual email address, would be delivered directly to the spammers inbox. Knowing the email address - and the blog URL (how many comments do not include a link to a blog?) - the hacker would go straight to work.

Later, we would see forum reports.

I can't control my blog, any more - and somebody has updated it with spam!

This was a direct result of the former blog owner, having left a comment on somebody else's blog.

By eliminating our email addresses from our comments, Google is helping to protect our accounts and blogs, while letting us continue to comment on each others blogs - and to eliminate one type of unnecessary spam from our blogs.

Google+, which replaces email for networking, uses a "Friend of a Friend" relationship to let you expand your universe infinitely, with each comment, message, photo, and video that you share. It lets you control the expansion of your universe - if you wish. And, it helps keeps your Blogger blog under your control.

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Comments Posted, Using Google / Google+ Profiles, Use "noreply" Email Addresses

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?

These are people who have updated their Blogger accounts, to use a Google or Google+ profile. Neither Google or Google+ profiles provide the option to

Show my email address

It appears that, with the deployment of the new Google / Google+ profiles to Blogger, Google is making yet one more attempt to convince us to network using Google+ - and keep our email addresses to ourselves. If you moderate or monitor comments to your blog, you may have recently noticed many non anonymous comments labeled with a common email address of "noreply-comment@blogger.com", instead of personal email addresses.

People who intentionally wish to expose their email addresses in their comments will need to revert their Blogger accounts to the Blogger profile. If this is a concern for you, go to your dashboard. From the menu attached to the gear icon at the top right, select "Revert to Blogger profile", and you'll have your Blogger profile back. Then edit your profile, select "Show my email address" under Privacy, and you'll be back to sharing your email addresses in your comments.

It's likely that the noreply email addresses are being offered to keep many bloggers 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.

All that an imaginative 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, using their email addresses.

If you decide to revert to a Blogger Profile for posting comments - or even if you don't - consider using Google 2-Step Verification, to protect your Blogger / Google account from hacking.

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