The Real Blogger Status

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 see too many problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about locked accounts and deleted blogs. My Google account was suspended because of 'suspicious activities'. Last month, I realized that my two connected blogs, to that account, were also put offline! Somebody else was unable to use the supplied account / blog recovery tools - and tried guessing what could not be remembered .

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 have several blog owners, trying to use Blogger - and seeing warnings from McAfee WebAdvisor. When I try to log out, I am getting a risky connection warning. Whoa! Are you sure you want to go there? I cannot log out of blogger.

Some blog owners, who use AdSense, received some very disturbing email this weekend. This morning I received the following email from Google. Dear Publisher, We have now verified that we are no longer detecting PII being passed to Google from the account(s) under your control. Thank you for helping to resolve this matter. Regards, The Google Policy Team What did I do, this time? Is my AdSense account in danger of being terminated? And the email was labeled "Policy Breach Notice". Fortunately, this was, apparently, just another episode of Google being Google .

We've been discussing the problem of email filtering , and missing email, for some time. Some blog members / owners are certain that their missing email isn't caused by filters. I looked in "Bulk" / "Spam"! The email isn't there, either - it simply does not get delivered!! These people are certain that Blogger just is not sending the email. In some cases, the problem is not with "Bulk" / "Spam" filters - it is with anti-spoofing filters - and email detected as spoofed, generally, is "bounced".

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've been seeing a few problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from blog owners seeing malware warnings for unknown blogs or websites. I get a warning from Google Chrome, when I login to Blogger. Content from www.unknownblog.com, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware. We know that our blogs are subject to malware and spam classification - but now we see that we can also get warnings for other blogs and websites, that we don't own.

We see reports, from time to time, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about blogs which people can't read, from their computers. One of my readers claims that I have a virus on my blog. He provided the following information: AVG anti-virus detected the following threat on the site: File Name: www.mydomain.com/favicon.ico Threatname: Exploit Black Hole Exploit Kit How do I fix this? Similar to the many reports that we process here, about spurious spam classification , the above report is frequently determined to be a false positive. An anti-virus alert, even if a false positive, is generally not as simple to resolve as a spurious Blogger spam classification, though.

Recently, a few Blogger blog owners are looking at their blogs and wondering Where is my Navbar? or Why don't I have a "Sign In" ("Sign Out") link, at the top of the page? When investigating further, they may discover that none of the blogs, that they view, shows the Navbar. And, they did not intentionally make any template changes, to their blog, to hide the navbar . Many of these people, later investigating the problem in Blogger Help, learn that their browser, or another anti malware product, is blocking the navbar as suspicious code. This is another example of improperly configured layered security , planned to protect our computers. If you are observing the lack of the navbar on your computer, and you request help in Blogger Help, please help us to help you better, and provide details. What browser ( name and version - and precision matters) are you using? What add-ons are installed, in the browser (completeness matters)? What anti malware product...

We are seeing a steadily increasing flood of reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from people who use Norton Safe Web, and who are now seeing some distressing advice. When I try to view any BlogSpot blog, I see This web page is a known fraudulent web page. It is recommended that you do NOT visit this page. For your protection, this web page has been blocked. Visit Symantec to learn more about phishing and internet security. What is Google doing about this false alert? Since Norton (aka Symantec) is not a part of Google, there is not a lot that Blogger or Google can do about this problem.

Late last year, Blogger blog owners seeking to publicise their blog posts using their FaceBook Wall, were denied that possibility, silently . That problem was recently resolved, though still in silence. Recently, Blogger blog owners started reporting a new symptom of problems with FaceBook. I try to share my blog address on FaceBook, and I receive this message The content you're trying to share includes a link that's been blocked for being spammy or unsafe: Now what do I do? This symptom is most likely a problem which the individual blog owners will need to discuss, with FaceBook Support .

Do you see the Followers gadget in the sidebar here? See the "Sign in" link at the top of the gadget (if you're not signed in to Following), or the "Invite your friends" link at the bottom of the gadget (if you are signed in to Following)? Move your mouse over either link, and watch the browser status bar (generally, the lower left of the browser window border). When you move the mouse pointer over a normal link, you should see the URL of the link. In this case, you see javascript:void(0); A lot of blog owners don't understand the reason for this, and think that the blog is broken, or maybe hacked. I can't publish any posts on my blog, or moderate any comments. At the bottom of the page I get an "Errors on page" message, and if I hover over certain areas of my dashboard, I get the "javascript:void(0);" message.

Today marked yet another milestone in the ability of Google to make a mistake, admit to the mistake, and fix the mistake on the same day (and on a weekend morning even). Seen all over the web. Affecting my blog, "networking.nitecruzr.net" (among millions of others). Even, affecting WikiPedia. Supposedly, identified and fixed less than an hour after discovered. Apparently, this resolution is in the magnitude of the bx-sp4hmm error of 28 February 2007 . >> Top

We have recent reports that Kaspersky Internet Security is issuing "Phishing Attack" warning messages, when any BlogSpot blog is loaded on a protected computer. To validate any such warnings, use other anti-malware sites, such as McAfee Site Advisor . Verification of such warnings is a necessary task, so not to cause a panic. Claims that the entire BlogSpot address space is infected won't do anybody any good, except maybe the hackers who would love to see benevolent web sites, hosted by BlogSpot, avoided by those needing advice. Don't be caught up by rumours - please validate any security alerts . And post your findings at Google Blogger Help - Something Is Broken . >> (Update 2/10 1:02) : Kaspersky customers report that the KIS signature update was received but the problem remains unresolved . It's definitely a false positive though. >> (Update 2/9 21:00) : Advisory note on Kaspersky Support Forum noted, possible time stamp 2/9 21:19 UDT states ...

All of the companies that I've worked for in my history, which had computers, controlled everything rather tightly. Businesses do that. Businesses owned the big computers, aka mainframes. We, as programmers, would write code. We would test the code. We would give the code to a computer operator, who would run the code as a job. We would train the computer operators. All code ran on company owned and controlled computers, over company owned and controlled networks, maintained by company trained personnel. Every change was made, and tested, by people working for the company. Very tightly focused, and controlled.