As the reach of RSS feeds continues to expand, they are cropping up in very useful places. One of the greatest conveniences they can provide is monitoring forums for new threads and posts. That can save a man a lot of of mouse clicks, particularly when he frequents many different forums. But with this added convenience comes a responsibility to secure the feeds you provide. If not, you may find anonymous visitors reading segments of posts that you don't want anyone to see.

The most common mistake I've seen is giving your syndication software the wrong permission mask. For instance, if you provide only one feed for all of your forums, then you need to make sure that any hidden forums (such as sections for administrators and moderators) are not added to the feed. In such a case, you'd probably want to use an anonymous permission mask.

By Lineman at SECOMGroup.

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