I just noticed on the list of referrers that there is some strange LiveJournal syndication of my blog, listed under the username genecowan.
Who did this? And why? I’ve never seen something like this before, and frankly I’m not very happy about it.
Anyone know what this is all about, and how I can stop it… or if I should?
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Gene, I think this is LiveJournal’s equivalent of an RSS aggregator, its way of allowing its users to include RSS feeds of non-LiveJournal sites in their “friends” list of content with which they want to regularly keep up. You could consider it a compliment that some LJ user(s) considered your content valuable enough to spend some of their syndication points to have your RSS feed added as a syndicated feed on LJ so that they and others might read it more naturally and readily within the LJ environment with which they’re most familiar.
It’s not really identity theft, in my opinion, since there’s no real user behind the account posing as you; it’s the same content–and only that content–you offer in the RSS feed you make available from your site, and it’s not really different from someone choosing to read that RSS feed in an aggregator (as I often do with your content via Bloglines, for example).
I’m not sure, then, why you’d want to stop it; it increases your readership and it seems (to me) a legitimate use of an RSS feed, which is basically an invitation to syndicate your content. But you could stop providing RSS feeds altogether, or you might try contacting the LJ sysadmins if you really want your syndicated material to be removed only from their users.
Some info is here: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqcat=syn