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Blogger Is Unfair - To Would Be Blog Thieves

Blog owners continue to forget the account name and / or password of their Blogger accounts, then demand alternate recovery options.

Every week, we see the reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, claiming that changing their email - or getting a new phone - caused somebody to unfairly lose access to her / his blog. Too many blog owners refuse to understand that the email address and phone number are simply backdoor accesses to their Blogger accounts.

When given advice to use Blogger: Forgot your username or password?, or Blogger Help: Having trouble signing in or viewing your blog?, we frequently see demurrer.
Neither tool helps me. Can I please contact a real person?

The implication, when demanding human real time contact, is that the blog owner (or would be blog thief) can provide secret details - which when supplied, will convince a real Google security employee that the Blogger account / blog is the legal property of the complainant.

Secret details, which are jointly effective for Blogger / Google and the would be blog owner, are quite limited.

Account / blog recovery details have standards, to be useful.

Any account / blog recovery has to be based upon details which have three requirements.

  1. The would be owner knows, and can use.
  2. Blogger / Google can verify, within their own databases.
  3. No third person can discover, using enough search time (Google or competitor) - or manufacture, using PhotoShop or a similar product.

Any details, which do not fulfill all 3 requirements, are either useless or unsafe. If unwisely accepted by Blogger / Google, they simply allow theft of someone else's properly secured Blogger account and blogs.

Verification can only use Blogger / Google maintained details.

Verification has to be based on Blogger / Google databases. Blogger cannot accept FaceBoook, Twitter, or WordPress personal pages or profiles, as proof of identity or ownership.

Blogger has a responsibility to active blog owners, to not permit theft.

Many complainants claim that Blogger is being unfair, in denying them access to their blogs. They overlook the fact that unwisely accepting publicly known or unverifiable details, as proof of blog ownership / identity, would be unfair to the millions of blog owners, who remember their login details - and are actively maintaining and publishing their blogs.

The purpose of account recovery is not to simply allow every blog owner access to their blogs, even if they casually neglected to remember required identification tokens (account name, email address, password, etc.). The purpose is to allow as many blog owners as possible access to their blogs - while preventing malicious blog theft by hackers able to misuse the provided recovery tools.

Active blog owners want their blogs to remain theirs.

People who carefully maintain access to their accounts and blogs do so, based on the presumption that Blogger / Google will not unwisely give someone else access. These people appreciate the Blogger promise that our blogs will remain ours, forever - as long as we exercise common sense and courtesy.

The many blog owners, who maintain both front door and back door access - and actively maintain and publish their blogs - do not really care about the few who need "their" long dormant blogs recovered - or who want to delete "their" blogs, so they can move their activity to FaceBook or WordPress. They appreciate that Blogger will not give up login details, without observing appropriate caution.

Comments

Recently I was asked by Google to update my security by verifying my phone#. I have tried this before with Google but it doesn't work (although it works with FB). FB calls and sends an actual voice number code. I do not have a smart mobile phone, so my landline phone # is the only one I have listed at Google (and a cell phone for emergency, again not a smart phone). How do I verify my landline phone with Google??? Do I go onto the Help Forum for this issue? Thanks.
Nitecruzr said…
Angelina,

Please define "it doesn't work".
1. Google does not call.
2. Google calls, but you don't get anything useful.
3. Google calls, but what they give you is rejected by the "Verify your phone number" wizard.
They ask to leave a text message but my land line cannot receive texts.

FB calls and prompts numeric code.

Is there any other verification method? (I have already lost access to an older blog; I do not want to lose access to anything else now.)
Thanks.
Nitecruzr said…
Angelina,

This needs to be reported, in the forum, so we can track it.

Please provide lots of details, when you report the problem.
all set. i added alternate email address; they sent me a verification; it worked.

thanks!!
(necessity is indeed the,, and so on.)

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