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AboutUs: Difference between revisions
→Criticism
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==Criticism== | ==Criticism== | ||
AboutUs has been criticized for stealing private information from websites. The website has a bot which scrapes information from a website and uses it to make a starter AboutUs wiki page. The initial seeding of the wiki had a bot that disregarded websites protected by a robots.txt | AboutUs has been criticized for stealing private information from websites. The website has a bot which scrapes information from a website and uses it to make a starter AboutUs wiki page. The initial seeding of the wiki had a bot that disregarded websites protected by a robots.txt. Websites are still vulnerable due to the fact that the wiki encourages AboutUs users to add information about the website to it. | ||
===Response=== | ===Response=== | ||
AboutUs uses publicly available information to create a starter wiki page on every website that is searched for on its system. (after the initial 2+ million seeding) Unlike weblogs, or the whois system, it is very easy to change or request removal of information (from the history). | AboutUs uses publicly available information to create a starter wiki page on every website that is searched for on its system. (after the initial 2+ million seeding) Unlike weblogs, or the whois system, it is very easy to change or request removal of information (from the history). | ||
The initial seeding of the wiki had a bot that disregarded websites protected by a robots.txt. That was quickly fixed and efforts are ongoing to revert the edits that are in conflict. | |||
It is a bit jarring to people who are not used to an open edit internet, that anyone, anywhere can write about them or the things they care about in such a manner. I suppose it was also jarring to people when weblogs exploded on the scene. | |||
==Wiki Pages== | ==Wiki Pages== | ||