The Real Blogger Status

We see occasional frustration, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , involving broken or unreliable custom domains. I setup the Custom Domain properly, following the Google directions . For some of my readers, my custom domain is not opening. I can see it is going in an infinite loop in the browser - and after a long time, it's throwing errors. My domain is setup, properly. Why do I have to deal with this? And we will investigate - and in many cases, we find the domain is setup properly .

A few blog owners, who publish blogs published to custom domains, are becoming impatient , waiting for Blogger Engineering to finish the Blogger upgrade to support HTTPS / SSL. If I get a domain through Google Domains, will I be able to get HTTPS? Unfortunately, no. HTTPS / SSL is simply not available, to blogs published to custom domains .

We deal with a lot of "lost blog control" complaints, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Lost blog control complaints, that involve blogs published using a dynamic template, are not easily resolved.

Some blog owners like Blogger One Button Publishing - but they don't like the restrictions . Possibly observing the chaotic freedom of WordPress self hosted blogs, they wonder if custom domain publishing provides the same freedom. If I pay for my domain, can I host porn with ads? Unfortunately, custom domain publishing, unlike WordPress self hosted blogs, still uses the Blogger dashboard - and still publishes content which is accessible using "blogspot.com".

Blogger recently expanded a key feature in their infrastructure - country local domain redirection . Like all Blogger features, every time they expand the scope of aliasing, they cause problems. Some of the problems that were caused by the recent expansion of country local domain redirection - where they added over 2 dozen countries , in one project - are damaging vulnerable Blogger blogs. Incidental damage to any blogs, however, should not justify stopping - or impeding - the implementation of redirections, on a worldwide basis.

Some blog owners expect to get a slap on the wrist, for each TOS violation. I had a notice on the blog. If anybody objects to what I'm doing, just tell me - and I'll remove the offending content! Why was my blog deleted? These owners plan blog content, based on doing what they want - hoping that Blogger will make them a list, over and over again, identifying their mistakes. Don't do that! That attitude is similar to what we hear from some politicians. It's not a crime, until I get caught!

We're lately seeing a few problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , from owners of blogs now locked as malware / spam hosts. My blog was deleted because it is marked as spam. I never spammed so why my blog has been confirmed as a Spam Host? This blog owner appears to have simply accepted advice from the wrong person . Using The Internet Archive (aka "Wayback Machine") we can sometimes find cached copies of blogs, even after deleted as suspected malware / spam hosts. In one case, though, viewing the blog was not possible - even having found a copy of the blog, in cache.

We see the signs of naivete, periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I require my readers to enter a password, to keep my blog safe from public view? This blog owner does not understand the realities of setting up a private blog. Long ago (very long ago), a computer system might have "private" files, and a shared password, known by everybody, for each file. Nowadays, a private Blogger blog uses team blog access - or team blog ownership - and each team member gets to choose her / his own Blogger account , with a password that he / she decides to use (and hopefully, remember).

Recently, we've had several reports from naive blog owners, with blogs locked for malware or phishing, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Some owners have found accessories, such as email address collection or even a convenient login gadget, offered by helpful third parties. Installing the new gadgets, they have later received the well known (automated detection) notice, from Blogger Support.

Some Blogger blog owners treat custom domain publishing, as drivers in Miami USA treat the suburban streets. Have you ever been to Miami, Florida, USA? Many of the suburban streets there are long, straight, and intersect at 90 degree angles. And as you get into the outer suburbs, with housing developments which (this year) may be right next to the Everglades - there will be almost no traffic, much of the day. The major streets intersect with stop signs or traffic lights. Many of the natives blow the stop signs, run the red lights, and speed with almost reckless abandon. And auto collisions are frequent - and lawyers and police are very busy.

This week, we're seeing a small flood of reports about abuse / malware classifications, involving various blogs. Some blogs are being classified as an apparently intensified effort to block a long recognised malware source - and others because of a newly detected problem. For a while, we've been noting problem reports discussing blogs with gadgets provided by "abu-farhan". Some hijacks would lead to simple spam displays (of possibly objectionable content), while others led to active malware distribution. The latter, in turn, generated more problem reports here - by people reporting their blogs now under the control of other people, who were not the original blog owners. This week, we see reports that Google has taken action against the "abu-farhan" domain . Blogger now appears to be actively classifying blogs, which contain accessories provided from "abu-farhan", as malicious content hosts - pending review, on a blog by blog basis. Along ...

We see some people, posting in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , who have problems with blogs under team ownership, and abuse classification. My blog was deleted as spam but I don't spam! BTW, one of the other administrators of my blog recently had his Google account blocked. We've observed, a few times, that team blog relationships create interesting complications, with various Blogger issues - and this appears to represent yet one more complication.

We've been discussing deleted blogs, resulting from Blogger accounts locked after suspicious account activity is detected , for some time. Recently, we've seen a variant on the account lock / deleted blogs problem. I made one of my friends an admin for my blog. When Blogger deleted His Blogger account and his blogs, they deleted my blog also. Here, we see the possibility of detected hacking, affecting other members in a team blog ownership.

Some blog owners don't understand the serious nature of repeated violation of TOS Policy, in Blogger blogs - and how offenses are handled, by Google. We've seen several reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from blog owners who appear to be unclear about the consequences of repeated TOS Violations. I got email from Blogger, about my Blogger account. We'd like to inform you that we've received another complaint regarding a blog that you administer. Upon review of your account, we've noted that you've repeatedly violated the Terms of Service: http://www.blogger.com/go/terms . Given that we've provided you with several warnings of these violations and advised you of our policy towards repeat infringers, we've been forced to disable your Blogger service. How do I get my blog restored? This example appears to represent the final step, in a multi step policy.

We've been helping Blogger blog owners deal with spurious fuzzy content classification , for many years. We started out, long ago, with blogs deleted because of spam classification. Later, Blogger added malware classification - and most recently, porn classification ("adult content", with objectionable advertisements). These three classification categories involve fuzzy blog content analysis.

Occasionally, we see concern in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about the long term effects of Blogger hacking / malware / porn / spam classification or detection. My blog was deleted, because of spurious spam classification - and later restored to service. Did my blog lose search engine reputation, in Google? Any time a blog goes offline, its reputation is affected, to some extent. How much effect a hacking / malware / porn / spam classification or detection has, on any given blog, will vary widely. You might expect to see different penalties, for different offenses .

One of the more intriguing issues, seen in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , involves people unable to recover control of their blogs . I recently changed ISPs, and now I can't login to update my blog. Occasionally, this issue becomes more complicated, because the blog is deleted - and the owner can't request that it be restored, using the automated review request wizard. Sometimes, the would be blog owner may to try to bypass the current blog recovery policy , by claiming special circumstances. The blog has been deleted. I received no suspicious activity or password change notification emails, or emails of any kind related to my blog. What is the story here? Can blogs just disappear from the Blogosphere, without the involvement of the blog owners - and be unrecoverable?

For a long time, we've been dealing with various malware / spam mitigation issues, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Recently, malware detections, long simply identified as "Malicious JavaScript" in the well known Spam Appeal Guidelines , was given its own identity, and a separate classification / appeal process . We're now seeing several common types of JavaScript, included in blogs which are typically mentioned in forum reports. It may be helpful to describe some examples of JavaScript code being seen, so blog owners can avoid making the same mistakes, by not including these scripts in their blogs.

We're seeing a few complaints, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about overly aggressive malware classification. Many of the complaints are from blog owners who only want to publish their blogs without fear of side effects from the latest controversial feature, Country Code Alias Redirection . Spurious malware / spam detection is a painful topic to discuss - and it's even more so when the question of country code alias redirection is discussed. Like auto pagination long ago, country code alias redirection appears to be another case of Google manipulating its customers, maliciously. If you consider this issue from the viewpoint of Blogger blogs in general, though, you may see the full picture.

Recently, we've seen that Google, StopBadware.Org, and various other services, are stepping up the fight against malware distributed by Blogger blogs. Not only blogs actively distributing malware, and blogs linking directly to web sites that distribute malware, are affected. In one identified case, a blog that linked to a "clean" web site, that linked to another web site where malware was distributed , was locked. In other cases, blogs that use dodgy accessories are being targeted. It seems now that many of the reported URLs have a 'BlogLinker.com' code snippet in them- *please* stay away from this widget in the future; it is completely nefarious.