MySpace Security Measures - The Good, The Bad and Stickam
Jul 20 2006Over the last week or so there have been some problems with malicious Flash widgets and MySpace profiles. As a result, MySpace has been pushing Flash 9 and updating user profiles with allownetworking=”internal”. It appears that this security measure requires 2 parts. First, the viewer must update to Flash 9 and second, a user must have updated their profile recently to have had the new tag inserted.
The Good:
This new measure does not break widgets from functioning. What it does is prevent external links from the Flash widget. This should help prevent malicious use of external linking from Flash.
The Bad:
Many widgets have a link to the widget site to help promote and inform about the widget. While there can be ways around this, such as html links, many users will probably strip that html code out. Some widgets have specific functionality that requires external linking and popups.
Stickam:
We will address the Stickam video chat player specifically since much of our service and content relates to Stickam. Some testing and review has been done on a small random sampling of MySpace profiles with the Stickam player. We have verified that some players are indeed no longer linking externally and have had the tag inserted into the code. The player still loads and functions, however, the player features which launch an external link and window no longer work if you have updated to Flash 9. This is a critical issue for Stickam since it is necessary in order to open a Stickam chat window with the person. The player will also no longer open the user’s profile due to the same security measures.
While we see the good and the bad, it looks to be a sever blow to Stickam if they are not able to come up with a workaround. MySpace is a huge user base and market for Stickam to lose.
For more detailed coverage and comments, visit TechCrunch.
You put the link text as to “Mashable” but it actually goes to TechCrunch.
Link has been updated. Thanks for letting us know. We apologize for the mistake.
Hmm…I never thought to check that. I got the message from myspace to update my Flash to version 9…but never thought to check that my Stickam player was still functioning properly.
[...] All we got to say is, “Wow!” We don’t know what Stickam did or why MySpace has it out for Stickam, but this is not good for Stickam. A while back MySpace crippled external flash widgets on their site. This hurt a lot of companies out there trying to push their widgets on to MySpace. Now MySpace is kicking Stickam out wholesale. [...]
[...] We have a slight update for the bLaugh Widget. Both MySpace and Stickam insert the allowNetwoking=internal tag onto the embed code which disables external linking from Flash. Unfortunately, there are other sites that are following in this direction. This makes it difficult for Flash widgets to provide the user experience that many widgets providers and developers want to present to the user. We are no different in this respect. [...]
[...] on what they do with this power. Based on history though, it doesn’t look good. MySpace has blocked external links from Flash widgets and blocked some domains entirely [...]