Social Software Considerations for XML Clients

Nick Bradbury, creator of FeedDemon (which was just acquired by NewsGator last week) has just put up a terrific analysis of the considerations all developers of RSS and Atom aggregators and syndication clients should be keeping in mind with regard to secure behavior and sensible defaults:

Even if I'm way off base about how spam will come to RSS, we all know that spammers will find a way to jump on the RSS bandwagon. Given past history, every new social technology needs to think about spam right from the start, or else risk being crippled by it.

Moving on to specifics, Nick adds:

I took a look at how a few of the existing tools were handling them. To my surprise, security didn't seem to be a big concern - they'd even download EXE enclosures, perhaps assuming that the user's anti-virus software would stop them from being executed if they were malware. Couple automatic enclosure downloading with dynamic search feeds which contain enclosures, and you've got a great spyware delivery system.