The Real Blogger Status

We are seeing an increasing number of reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about problems accessing various dashboard features. Recently I have faced a problem on my blogs dashboard. The problem is Invalid Security Token Error 403 How do I solve this? This blog owner faces the latest variant of the long feared monolithic error, "403 Forbidden".

Not all blog owners understand the reasons behind the locked Blogger / Google accounts. Even less understand why recovery of locked accounts, and of the blogs owned by the locked accounts, is not immediate. We see the occasional report, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I had to change the password on my account - and now my blogs are deleted! Why should I wait another "24 to 48 hours" to get my blogs back? This blog owner does not understand the possible reasons for the locked account - and the work that goes on after the account is unlocked. Brute force hacking of our Blogger / Google accounts, by hackers / spammers, who have use of the various botnets in the Internet, is a constant activity. Opposing activity, by the Security teams in Blogger / Google, to not let hackers and spammers take control of our accounts and blogs, is just as constant. Some of the Security activity requires our patience - and blog owners, having to recover their deleted blogs,...

Next to its immediate cousin error Another blog is already hosted at this address I don't know of too many more frustrating Blogger error states than seeing 403 Forbidden Most cases of "403 Forbidden", seen and discussed recently in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , have geographical affinity - and are typically transient - and apply to blogs published to "blogspot.com". Some cases of "403 Forbidden" however, will involve custom domain publishing , where the blog owner should - but most likely will not - see Another blog is already hosted at this address When publishing the blog to the domain.

In terms of Blogger problems, which occur seemingly randomly and have no obvious user solution, I can't think of too many that bring more dread into peoples hearts than 403 Forbidden That message is actually where I started this blog - many, many years ago . It's come up, in discussion, several times . The message "403 Forbidden" is literally a response by a computer somewhere, saying that you are not permitted to access this computer . For Blogger / Google customers, it generally has a slightly different origin.

This week, we're seeing more reports of the return of an old friend (not) We're sorry... ... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. When asked about this in the forums in the past, Blogger has described it as a problem with "fuzzy detection". Like many chronic Blogger problems, it doesn't have a simple solution . Google, like every large Internet presence on the face of the earth, is constantly under attack. If the bad guys use a large and varied army of botted computers , the Google attack detection servers have to look for a pattern in the attack. In some cases, they will see an attack coming from a block of Internet addresses. You may be unlucky enough to have your connectivity using an address similar to the block detected in the attack, and the fuzzy logic will see your address as part of the attack. If you seem to be affected by th...

And as another issue for starting the New Year right, we have a return of yet another old friend We're sorry... ... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. One post in the Blogger Help Group: Something Is Broken forum, " Blogger/Google aware of 403 errors " was kind enough to provide a link to the Blogger Known Issues Hot List , where unfortunately, this issue is not seen. Yet there are half a dozen threads, and a dozen or so individual complaints, in the forum. >> Top

During the weekend of May 10 - 11, 2008, many Blogger readers were having trouble viewing our blogs. Instead of seeing The Real Blogger Status (and various other blogs of greater and lesser importance), some unhappy folks were seeing a well known problem 403 Forbidden. Pete Hopkins, the Google Man In The Know , described the cause of the problem - the side effect of a massive Denial Of Service attack against Google, as Blogger is currently experiencing a high level of automated requests. In order to keep Blogger running smoothly for as many people as possible, we are blocking some IPs. and continued with Just because your IP is blocked does not mean that you or your network is making automated requests, you've just gotten caught up in the block. We are working to remove the incorrect blocks as soon as possible. Yet as of this evening, it appears that not everybody is back to normal. It's possible that you, or your readers, who are affected by this problem will be able to get ...

Recently, a few bloggers have seen the return of an old favourite (not) Google Error We're sorry ... ... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. The general thought is that Google just changed some settings, and they need to change them back. Now . In reality, the situation isn't nearly so simple. The problem doesn't just involve settings. Hackers are increasingly inventive , so Google servers do behaviour and signature analysis of all incoming network traffic. As the hackers get more inventive, the analysis has to be more picky, which makes analysis prone to false positives . Then changing software on our computers makes for still more problems. When you see the error, it's possible that some basic diagnostic information might make it possible for Blogger Support to troubleshoot the problem . Browser. Internet connection. Location - geograph...

Long ago, 403 Forbidden was the first subject of this blog . Not a good way to start the week. I couldn't even publish this, for 1/2 hour or so, this morning (7:00 - 7:30 or so PDT). Even the navbar was affected, and from another computer too. And the old standby, clearing cache and cookies , had no effect. Then suddenly, it started working. Look at the forum search results - this actually started yesterday, and quite a few reports there too. (Edit 11:00): Problem solved, status provided by Pete . >> Forum thread links: 403 Forbidden >> Copy this tag: 403 Forbidden >> Top

When publishing a post, or saving as Draft, some Bloggers are getting various error messages Invalid security token. or maybe securityToken : Your request could not be processed. Please try again. or similar messages No further details are typically provided by the Bloggers, and apparently there's no bX- code being issued with the error. I would bet that another scripting change was made recently, and the folks affected have cached script that's not compatible with their cookies. Apparently clearing cache and cookies is the proper solution - several Bloggers have acknowledged this solution in his/her case. Also suggest that the Blogger may need to verify how he (she) is logging in to Blogger.Com . >> Forum thread links: bX-*00015 >> Copy this tag: bX-*00015

When publishing a post, or saving as Draft, some Bloggers are getting various error messages Invalid security token. or maybe securityToken : Your request could not be processed. Please try again. or similar messages No further details are typically provided by Blogger Engineering - and apparently there's no bX- code being issued with the error. It's probably a variant of the " 403 Forbidden " error. I would bet that another scripting change was made recently, and the folks affected have cached script that's not compatible with their cookies. Apparently clearing cache and cookies is the proper solution - several Bloggers have acknowledged this solution in his/her case. Also suggest that the Blogger may need to verify how he (she) is logging in to Blogger.Com . (Update 2015): This symptom is now being reported as " Invalid Security Token Error 403 ".

So back to my immediately previous reason for publishing this blog. One of my friends emailed me today, and he appeared to take the "403 Forbidden" message personally. Chuck, if you don't want me viewing your blog, just let me know. Or why am I getting illegal access? In a later IM, I confirmed that what he saw as "illegal access" was actually our dear friend from the weekend, "403 Forbidden". But that got me thinking. This was one friend, and HE was able to email me, and help me set the matter straight with HIM. But what of the hundreds of strangers who got this message? Will they ever try again? Possibly not , based upon this one thought on Blogger Forum . My visit statistics, as measure by SiteMeter, are about back to normal. Except, 20 - 25% of my current statistics include THIS BLOG, which I added yesterday. Discounting this blog, which did not exist before last weekend (and which I started as a result of last weekend), my numbers are down 2...

More from their bot. Hi there, Thank you for your honest feedback regarding our status page. We are constantly working on improving Blogger, so we will certainly keep this in mind for the future. Thanks again for your input, and thanks for using Blogger! Sincerely, Blogger Support I think this one was responding to my earlier: A lot of people depend upon http://status.blogger.com/ to find out about problems like this. Wouldn't it be a good idea to either update that, or take it offline? Right now, it shows a status of Update, 5 minutes later: All fixed! Posted by Pete at 16:46 PST I wonder if calling the status page "Blogger Status" was entirely a result of the name? The initials BS seem too good to be true. >> Top

Of my dozens of problems reports, submitted by both email and from the Blogger Help webpage, I received several form notes: Hi there, Thanks for notifying us of this problem. We have rebooted the machine that was causing these errors, and you should now be able to both view and publish your blog normally again. If you continue to have trouble, please clear your browser's cache and cookies, then log in to Blogger again. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Sincerely, Blogger Support So what do we have on Blogger Status ? As of 12:30 PST, the most current post there is: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 Some users are currently getting “403 Forbidden” errors when viewing their blogs, and “Permission Denied” errors (or variations thereof) when publishing. You may recognize this problem from Monday. The offending server is being replaced and then shot. We’ll let you know when things are back up. Shouldn’t be too long. Until then, affected blogs will be unavailable and unpublis...

See these Blogger Support tickets: [#415414] Forbidden / Permission Denied [#416206] 403 Forbidden [#417267] 403 Forbidden See these discussions: Blogger Support Forum Blogger Support Forum Blogger Forum Blogger Support Forum Current open issues . 5 years later, I figure out what "403 Forbidden" really means .