Rename Your Blog? I Don't Think So!

I said earlier DO NOT Delete Your Blog. I will now add to that advice.

DO NOT Rename Your Blog.

At least, do not rename your blog using the simple Dashboard procedure

• Settings
• Publishing
• Type in new name for "Blog*Spot Address"

as suggested by Blogger For Dummies.

Why? Redirect Trouble Renaming your blog, without leaving a stub behind, is the same as deleting your blog. The old name is available to the spammers. If you decide, in the future, that the old name was better, you'll likely find that name unavailable.

• We know the bad guys are actively hijacking deleted blogs, to recycle the search engine visibility that they have gathered.
  
• From the problems discovered to date, it's pretty certain that they are using automated techniques - not just searching by hand.
  
• It's pretty likely that any computers being used for the searching are hijacked, ie bots.
  
• The reliablity of individual bots is pretty low. Bots are Lossy. At any time, a botted computer might be:
  • Cleaned up by the legal owner.
  • Disconnected from the network.
  • Turned off.
  • Lose Internet service.
  
  
• Blog hijacks, and Spam Blogs ("splogs") are big business. The bad guys have access to bot armies, counted by the thousands.
  
• It takes not too much imagination to see two (or more) bots finding an "abandoned" blog (deleted, or being renamed), and simultaneously try to hijack it. I'd be surprised if there wasn't even some competition by the bad guys, just as the hackers compete to build up the largest bot armies.
  
• What might happen if two (or more) bots try to hijack a blog simultaneously? Well, I'd be extremely surprised if there is any queing or non-lockup mechanism built into bot code. Why should the bad guys care about problems? Their object is just to hijack blogs. In WiFi networking, it's called a collision. In this case, it's a corrupted blog.
  
• See A Blogger Security Problem?, for some possible real cases.
  

Prove me wrong. Please.

If you must move your blog to a new name, or to external publishing, plan the change carefully.