As some of you know, I was locked out of my Google account Wednesday morning. What that means is I was completely shut down – no access to email, no access to g+, no access to photo albums, and the worst, attempting to access my blog returned a plain blogger error page that says THIS BLOG DOES NOT EXIST. That’s right “does not exist”. Everything was gone. If I attempted to access any Google account features I received an error message that said I “may” have violated Terms of Service (TOS) and I could try to restore my account with a txt message to my phone. I had no idea what I had done or why they thought I “may” have violated TOS. I did get back online through the phone verification (took two tries over 45 minutes).
It is crazy easy to get locked and here’s how it happened to me. I had made a few comments on some blogs as well as updates in g+ communities. I made a comment on someone’s blog, moved to the next blog, hit submit for a comment and boom – I didn’t exist anymore.
I knew I needed to consider moving my blog to my own hosting to avoid the issue in the future, but I wasn’t in any huge hurry to do so. I had decided that I would just be VERY careful when using my account and make sure I didn’t OVER comment. Then, I discovered that my blogger account settings had been changed on my behalf and I was now a no-reply blogger. While attempting to figure that out, I heard from another blogger that they had also been spam locked. In addition, I’ve noticed Google removing comments from my blog. I will get an email that indicates I’ve received a new comment from a REAL HUMAN only to find it has been deleted from my blog. I’ve gone back and checked my own comments on other people’s blog and mine have been deleted from time to time as well.
The combination of my blog being removed, comments being removed from my blog, and my comments being removed from other blogs, I was inspired to try to get help from the big G to figure out what the issue is. As it turns out – Google had determined that blocking some legit users is acceptable to keep the number of spam blogs down. You can read another big pile of words that describe why google may shut you down for spamming and the unusual resolution process in this blogger product forum. I like Google products. I like blogger, it is exactly what I need for what I want to do. I like it’s simplicity. I like integration with my mail and social media. I like having everything on one platform. It doesn’t matter how much I like it though, when it comes down to it, we are all at risk of being criminalized in an effort to catch the criminals. Guilty until proven innocent. Ouch. I can’t allow Google to automatically and arbitrarily remove me from the face of the internet because I’m “too active” or used a word that is popular with spammers.
Truth - I’ve outgrown blogger. I’m serious about my web presence and intend to manage it reliably and fairly. I’m moving myself off the blogger platform. Yes, I will have to pay some amount per month for the hosting, but less than $10/month for the peace of mind that comes with having actual support people contactable by phone for issue resolution is worth every penny. Truth – I have no idea what I’m doing or how to do it. Like you’ve come to know in my crafts, I’m just going for it. One step at a time. It is going to take some time to get everything moved and looking like I want it. It is also going to take me a bit to learn the ropes for commenting and reading via wordpress. As a matter of fact, I’m likely to be a hot mess over the next week or two while I straighten myself out.
I sincerely hope you will have patience with me and meet me on the other side!
(update: In the first 30 minutes of working with GoDaddy for hosting, I’ve run into a problem, contacted a human support person, and had it fixed within 10 minutes.)
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