The Real Blogger Status

Everybody who uses a computer - and expects to use their computer for any amount of time - has one or more protective products on their computer. Anybody who publishes a blog, with an audience that has any need for security , is going to receive occasional reports from would be readers. I can't read your blog! My computer displays an "Unsafe website!" warning! All computer security products, unfortunately, will occasionally generate false positives. Analysing false positive malware reports is as much a part of every security product, as identifying the actual malware.

We see the potential for self induced stress, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , every week. How do I publish a blog, without identifying myself? Then later I forgot my account name / password, and I am not getting any email from "Forgot?"! These are two hypothetical problem reports, that are all too real, for many blog owners.

Abuse / Malware / Spam classification of Blogger blogs - and the inevitable bogus fuzzy classification - has been a part of Blogger life, for several years. Recently, we explored known effects of bogus classification, upon reader and search engine reputation. It's not a pretty picture - but it's also not likely to go away, as long as abusive persons, such as spammers , operate in the Internet world. Owners of blogs spuriously classified are not likely to be very objective - but we cannot avoid reality.

Spam review requests, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , are not unusual topics. Occasionally, we get a spam review request, with a twist. My blog has been deleted - but I don't have a "Restore", or a "Review" link on my dashboard! There are various reasons for blogs disappearing from the dashboard , not all of which a blog owner may be immediately aware.

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.

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.