Your Blogger Account: Anonymity Vs Security

One of the most frustrating problems with Blogger accounts involves the conflicting goals of anonymity and security.

1. We are allowed to publish a Blogger blog in complete anonymity. Blogger acknowledges and supports that need.
2. Anonymity comes at a price. Should you succeed in intentionally becoming completely anonymous, then forget the account name or password, there will be no way for Blogger to help you to recover access to your Blogger account.

Every week, we get reports from people who can't access their blogs because they changed their email address without proper planning. And some time ago, we dealt with a small flood of reports from people whose Blogger accounts - and blogs - had been stolen, using some devious hacking techniques.

Considering the need to prevent account and blog hijacking, yet allow people to be able to recover account access after changing email address, Blogger and Google have added an additional option for account authentication. This option may not please people who value anonymity, though.

Blogger / Google has added an additional account verification option, Two Step Verification. This will improve the chance of your being able to recover account access, if you forget the account name or password.

1. You first register your cell phone / portable computer, or home phone, using the "phone" number. Select "cell phone" or "home phone", carefully, for the right results.
2. Each time you login to Blogger / Google, your browser / computer is tracked as used.
3. Any time you login to Blogger / Google using a different browser / computer, Google will attempt to verify your identity, using the registered token.
   • They will send a text message (to your cell phone, using SMS) or a voice message (to your home phone), providing a 6 digit numeric code.
   • You enter the code into the verification screen, displayed in the login process.
4. If you forget the account name or password, and cannot use the account email address to recover access, you can use the cell / home phone as an alternate recovery option.

This approach - of using your cell phone or home phone as a verification token - will not work, for everybody.

• It requires advance action. By the time you realise that you have forgotten the account name / password, and you cannot use the backup email address to reset the password, it's too late to register your cell or home phone.
• If you value anonymity, you may not want your activity tracked.
• If you value anonymity, you may not want Google to have your cell or home phone number, stored in their databases.

For people who understand the risk of having ones Blogger account hacked - or who want to provide an additional option for account recovery when necessary, however, this is a solid option.

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