Why Does It Matter?

Why does the web crawler matter? I know several readers are wondering why I've been making such a fuss over it. I will attempt to explain my concerns, and why this is something that has me more than a little bit worried.

A web crawler has two basic types. One is a good version; it collects information from blogs and websites and puts them into search engines. The second is a malicious crawler that steals personal information and/or web content. To put that another way, this crawler could be trying to hack into my blogger account, then my Google account, then who knows what next. It could also be stealing my content (posts, photos, etc.) and planning on re-publishing it as it's own.

For those of you who don't have websites or blogs, this doesn't seem like a big issue. Maybe you have social media, and you think "my pics have never been stolen. No crawler would pose me a problem." You'd be right. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and the other major social media sites have extremely tight cyber security systems and full time staff whose job is to keep you safe. If your photo is stolen, it is done by an individual.

Blogger, the platform this blog is published on, is run by Google. It has a very safe platform to prevent major hacking. However, the prevention against content theft and web crawlers is entirely manual. That means me. Only me. I am the only person controlling the "permission" panel for bots and crawlers. I am not a tech-savvy person. I am not some phantom that generates new content for you. If it helps make me more human to you, I'm wearing a purple t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans right now. I'm just a person like you, and this is something that concerns me personally.

When the bot first appeared, I changed the permission settings to not allow any bots. This setting is not a "wall". It's more of discouragement. When the web crawler went through, it showed that it was not a "good" crawler. This leaves me hanging, wondering if this is a thieving bot, or if it is one designed to up the views on certain blogs.

For those of you who don't have a blog or website, you may think, "why does it matter? Anything can be stolen on the internet." You are right. It can be. However, and entire blog is a lot different than a single photo, or a single post.

For readers, this blog is something that just pops up posts every now and again. You enjoy reading them, but, for the most part, you have very little energy invested in their creations. If one gets stolen, you think, "that's a shame" but it doesn't really have any effect on you. For me, each post is something that I have to hand create. A blog post is not a quick thing. For most, it is a commitment to around forty-five minutes of work. Plus photos take time!

This blog means a lot to me, and I've worked hard for it. If the web crawler updates don't matter to you, don't read them. You don't need to read things you don't care about, but I will continue to write about what matters to me. I understand if you don't want to read the updates; there's elements of other blogs I don't read. That's fine. But please understand that this crawler could have a negative effect on this blog in the long term (should content be stolen or accounts hacked), and that is something I feel my readers should be kept aware of.

If you read this far, thank you. I promise a normal model horse post is coming either later today or tomorrow. I just felt like this should be addressed first.