Last night I was doing one of my occasional visits to Technorati, and regardless of if you think they are going to survivor die they are doing one cool thing. Asking people to directly write content for them, and it sounds like a good deal.

So I dutifully fill out the form and go back to other things to write about, when I get an e-mail from someone from Technorati, cool, that was quick and unexpected, the problem starts with the e-mail addresses in the file.

Like an idiot, I responded with my user_id before I went looking at the e-mail, but it is odd that the Technorati team would be using Gmail and Yahoo mail directly rather than their own domain. Of course this could have been forwarded from the Technorati mail server to gmail/yahoo mail, but normally you can do aliasing so that the e-mail comes from the right domain and the right account.

Depending on what I just screwed up, and where the original request went, I might have just given away ½ of my online credentials for the web site. This could be bad for me meaning I need to do the standard password reset and watch the service to make sure I didn’t just fall for something that could obliterate me on the service.

While I should have looked, if this does end up being legitimate, Technorati really needs to use their e-mail domains when talking to people. I didn’t directly notice, but usually using the domain you are coming from in an e-mail is something that you should be doing. It is a source of trust that you are talking to the right person at the right company, and could have kept me from wondering if I just gave out my user name on the service to the right people, or is there something else I need to wonder about.