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Account / Blog Recovery, And Anonymous Ownership

We see occasional evidence still of confusion about blog ownership, and dashboard access, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.
I can find my blogs on my profile page, and by Googling them - but I can't update them, post in them or access them in any way - even though the system says I'm logged in.
This blog owner is logged in to the wrong account - but has no way to recover, because the blog is offline.

If you had a blog, you don't have it now, and it's not online, then it was deleted - by Blogger, or by someone else.

Blogs are commonly deleted or locked, by Blogger, for three reasons.

There are three common causes, if deleted by Blogger. Each require owner action - not only a Blogger solution.
  1. The account was deleted because of repeated TOS violation.
  2. The account was locked because hacking activity was detected.
  3. The blog was deleted for spam / TOS violation.

In either case, if the blog is not visible on the dashboard, and no notice is seen, the owner is not using the account that owns / owned the blog. This is a result of anonymous or obscured blog ownership.

The blog owner must take the first step, in recovering a deleted blog.

It's up to the owner, to figure out what account that owns the blog, and to login to that account. The owner must either initiate account recovery (for hacking activity detected), or initiate blog recovery (for a deleted blog, whatever the cause).

Whether this involves an inadvertently created additional account, when accepting blog membership, or logging into Blogger - or an intentionally created additional account, for anonymity - only the owner can resolve this problem. This is the price of anonymous blog ownership - protection promised to us, by Blogger.

Blogger allows - and supports - anonymous ownership.

Blogger allows us to publish blogs anonymously, and under any account that we wish. They can't tell us what account we have forgotten - because successful anonymity protects us against identification.

If the blog was online, the "Forgot your username or password?" wizard would be a useful resource. Without use of "Forgot?" - which does not work with deleted or private blogs - the owner must login blindly, to recover the blog.

In this case, ones friends may be the best resource. Sometimes, an online cache may provide a clue - but online cache is not always available.

Only the blog owner can resolve an anonymity problem.

Some blog owners regard anonymity protection as a Blogger design problem - and wait for Blogger to fix their problem. This is not a design problem - and only the owner can resolve this problem. This is not a result of flakey account / blog recovery.

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