The Real Blogger Status

We've been seeing a few queries recently, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , suggesting very subtle account attacks going on. Some reports are about accounts locked (and blogs temporarily offline), because of "suspicious" / "unusual" activity . Other reports are sadder - and mention blogs now owned by another person . When we're able to identify the new blog owner, too many look like intentional hackers. Temporarily offline - or permanently stolen - both are stories that you do not want to tell. Fortunately, both stories can be prevented.

If you use Google Two-Step Verification , you will have a better chance of being able to recover Blogger account access, if you forget the account name or password. Alternately, use of 2-Step Verification may prevent account hijackings and blog theft, when you must use a computer that's not yours, or when you travel - as long as you carry your authentication device / tokens with you. As an alternative or complement to 2-Step Verification, Blogger recognises us using demographic details. People who consistently use the same browser, on the same computer, in the same location, and from the same Internet service, are easily recognised, are trusted more - and are less likely to receive secondary challenges.

One of the most frustrating problems with Blogger accounts involves the conflicting goals of anonymity and security. We are allowed to publish a Blogger blog in complete anonymity. Blogger acknowledges and supports that need . 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 , or they don't know which account owns a given blog . 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 .