WordPress.org

1. TreeSkier
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   I'm running version 2.8.4.

   My last two posts have shown correctly on the blog, but have also shown up as comments to the "previously latest" post, where the title of the latest post is used as the commenter's name on the comment. The body of the comment itself is the title of the previously latest post.

   My blog is at www.civilsocietytrust.org

   The previously latest post title was "Let the health companies answer to us", posted on Sep 7th. My latest post is "Obama's Reality Distortion Field". (Sorry if the content here is going to rile anyone up).

   On the Sep 7th posting there is now 1 Comment by a user named "Obama's Reality Distortion Field", with the body of the comment being "[...] Let the health insurance companies answer to us Sep 10 [...]". The timestamp on the comment is exactly the timestamp of the Sep 10th posting, 9:11am EST.

   Has anyone experienced anything similar to this? I'm a software developer, and this feels more like a bug to me than a hack. This behavior started about a week ago. My site is hosted by Yahoo, which automatically updates the WordPress version. I'm wondering if 2.8.4 was released around then, and if it introduced that bug.

   Thanks in advance,
   -TS

2. Otto42
   Moderator
   Posted 2 months ago #

   That's called a "pingback" and it's normal.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback

   When you link to another blog post inside a blog post, WordPress sends this "pingback" to the blog posts you linked to, letting them know you linked to them. This is received and generally shows up like a "comment" on the original post you linked to.

   This happens even if you linked to your own posts.

3. TreeSkier
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   AH!!!! Thank you very much for the explanation of an entirely reasonable behavior.

   I was pretty nervous about the entire thing, because a) I was hacked a while back with another WordPress blog and b) a recent post about the latest hacking opportunity.

   Regards,
   - TS

Reply

You must log in to post.