In reply to Michael Thomas.

Its a enormous problem and not only in the terms people as individuals consider.

Hackers, crackers and business snackers have all forms of reasons for doing their malicious activities. Some just kinda enjoy a challenge and feeling empowered somehow. NEVER understood that motivation. I mean, my goodness, some of these folks would make a fortune coding and I am sure some of them are in the industry doing just that.

Information harvesting, thats where the public gets frightened. In some respects, I understand that. Identity theft some real scary stuff. People only consider ID theft as their finances but it can be so much more than that. People doing things in someone elses name. IP addresses should never ever be stored IMHO in a program such as WP. It ties location to person. A hacker can that. If one incists. Write to the Apache Log or a log file secured behind a write only directory.

I believe its also a tool. For example, "ISIL attacks Wordpress". WTF? Like that would be a ISIL target? Please. I'd say its more like a useful propaganda breadcrumb that can be used in the future when its, "We must regulate" comes to term.

Everything I see and hear points to one common focal point. The future of the Internet will afford folks much much more capability than they have now. The unification of smart technologies (for lack of a better term) will afford folks absolutely MARVELOUS things they can do.

At the same time the unification of smart technology will remove the choices in what people can do and how they do it and the software that is still alive that they can do it with.

At some point in time it all comes to a head.

In as far as webmasters go, well, as I have said many times and been chastised a few for there are issues of liability irregardless of disclaimers. Disclaimers are potently useless in as far as breach of law goes. With some forms of websites liability is quite different than other forms. A blog site for example that were intentionally exposing peoples address data or personal information such as gender (Male/Female, Bi, Lesbian, Gay) etc. without permission could face libel. An eCommerce site different, even if its not credit card data exposed. A medical site, again, different, "We advise you mix Ajax and Beer along with Tylenol to cure your gout". Someone does that, attorney have a field day.

So really, there are a variety of responsibilities on all sides of the coin and the coin has many sides, not simply two.

The technology now is maturing to a point where it can be regulated and I suspect thats exactly what will happen. Sort of has to.

As I said in another post. One could have a web in the US or Britain that is espousing people to hate Islamic people. That causes a problem. A problem that governance folk are trying deal with and dont need more wood atop the fire. If the same webmaster were to go house to house and causing this on their streets they'd be arrested.

If a person in Turkey is showing the world the inner's of problems in that nation, what gives them the right? What issues does it cause their governance?

Americans because we are rather free (sorta) tend think that as long as they are not overboard all is fine. That is until someone comes poking around them.

Its all really crazy.

One world one governance is how this planet moves ahead or doesnt. Globalization is what thats about. Not just economics but more. Culturally thats a big big problem.

Or, on the very very other end of that as both radical and non-radical conspirator theorists might state, doesnt matter, We are facing a global change be that a rock from space or economic upheaval, Extraterrestrial takeover or Biblical Revelation.

At this point in time however its not hard to figure out whats important in our small microscosm of WP websites.

1. Webmasters should realize they have a certain responsibility as webmasters to their user public before self-interests. That means learn skills as a webmaster to ensure security. It means letting software builders know that "They dont want this data stored" for example. IP addresses should be optional as an example.

2. Developers need use best practices. If a say plugin is found to be insecure, WP should send a "ping" out that disables the plugin or theme. Webmaster might be upset but know what, thats called looking out for webmasters best interests.

3. With 200,000,000+ websites out there using WP it might be a good plan for WP.Core to have a voluntary security squad that are running "hackware" against new themes/plugins and maintain a website separated from WP.Core that allows webmasters to see such things.

4. Webusers, well it'd be nice if they did tight passwords and had hundreds of them. But they dont, and it cant be enforced. So... cant blame them or expect them to be responsible in that end. So, the software must be. * I am working on this as time allows *.

5. I and friends a few weeks back decided we'd slap a website out there and its still in building phase but it is up. We will announce it shortly.