Security Issue?

  • Resolved UmbrellaWeb

    (@umbrellaweb)


    2 years, 1 month ago

    Hi Team,

    So on checking Google search console for a few sites Google is reporting URLs that contain:
    admin-ajax.php?action=rank_math_overlay_thumb

    Thats just a redacted/simplified URL for this post. The full URL that google reports actually conatins a secret key like this: wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=rank_math_overlay_thumb&id=645982&type=play&secret=dad8d23a6bc46625c2baa385480fdc20

    IF you do a Google search for the term: action=rank_math_overlay_thumb you can see that quite a few sites pop up with the same issue.

    Begs the quetion as to HOW google can see these urls and WHY do they exist in the first place???

    Surely such URLs should NOT be publically accessible in the first place? The search results are littered with similar results of site using rankmath which does make us think twice about using it…

    Await a POSITIVE reply to determin IF we should move to a different solution IF there is clearly no fix to this issue…

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Plugin Support Rank Math Support

    (@rankmathteam)

    Hello @umbrellaweb,

    Thank you for contacting the support.

    Those URLs are generated when you use the watermark or image overlay feature of our plugin to add an icon or a watermark to the images when you share them on social media. You can check the page source of such posts that have an icon or watermark for social sharing and you will see that URL in the og:image tag.

    So the URLs are publically available in the tags but Google shouldn’t index them as they are for social sharing, not for getting indexed. You can add the following rule to your robots.txt file to block Google from crawling those URLs:

    user-agent: googlebot
Disallow: *?action=rank_math_overlay_thumb*

    You can edit your robots.txt file from WP Dashboard > Rank Math > General Settings > Edit Robots.txt.

    Also, it is just the naming of secret which we believe we can change to avoid any confusion. We have passed the suggestion to the developers.

    Hope that helps. Let us know if you need any other assistance.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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