The Real Blogger Status

No matter what Blogger does with improving the spam classification process, they will always generate some false positive classifications . The more that they improve the classification process overall, the more obscure the false positive classifications will be. Some false positives will require intense investigation of the blogs, to identify the relationships between the blogs involved - and to prove, to Blogger Policy Review staff, that a false positive classification is present. Some time ago, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , I had occasion to deal with a blog owner who was a currency trader, by profession. This person had published a cluster of blogs, where he discussed legitimate issues involved in currency trading . Currency trading is an essential part of exchange of merchandise , between different countries (the export / import business) - and the Blogger spam classification process had deleted his blogs, as suspected spam hosts.

As Blogger continues their efforts to classify and remove abusive use of Blogger resources , they are adapting and sharpening their fuzzy spam classification process . The sharpening enables them to righteously classify more spam blogs, and to spuriously classify less genuine blogs. This improvement is good - to everybody but the would be publishers of hacking, porn, and spam content. The victims of Blogger's success - the spammers - are being forced to change their techniques, and to outsource their controversial content to other sites. The spammers are going to both improve their technique, and to double or quadruple their efforts. Spammers use other peoples computers to do their work - so quadrupling their efforts simply means using more bots, and sending out more spam. That's a simple, low cost solution. This month, we have activity in BHF: How Do I? and BHF: Something Is Broken , possibly intending to probe the nature of the fuzzy classification process. That...

Occasionally, some bloggers report confusion over whether their blogs have been tagged as splogs, after receiving some odd email. Your blog at http://myblog.blogspot.com/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: NONE. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible. The blog does not appear to be locked, nor does it's online status change. All that's seen is the ominous email notice. The response from Blogger Support is slightly encouraging. we have a bug in our system that has been sending those email inadvertently So if you get this email, apparently you can ignore it. Your blog should remain online, and accessible as before. Check your dashboard - you should have administrative access , and no need to worry. >> Top

In 1977, the late Charles Bronson - better known for his vigilante justice " Death Wish " movies - starred in a movie that capitalised on US paranoia about American - Soviet Russia relations. Set at the height of the Cold War era , the plot of Telefon featured 51 human time bombs - all ordinary Americans. Each had been hypnotised to perform as Soviet spies, when a specially coded telephone call was received, with each tasked to sabotage some specific portion of the American infrastructure. None of the 51 human time bombs had any conscious awareness of their intended roles. Each thought of her or him self as an ordinary American, and lived that way - until a phone call from an evil renegade Soviet agent triggered their personal hypnotic suggestion . The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. Remember. Miles to go before I sleep. In the action adventure genre of fiction (aka "spy...

During the past couple of weeks, we have noted a significant increase in the volume of Unlock my blog, it is not spam! problem reports, with a large proportion being judged false positives after review. Unfortunately, the false positives can only be identified after the blog owners report I submitted the review request, and the appeal, and I waited the required 2 business days. Now what? and we have seen a few of those this week. We have also seen a few more odd reports The 2 business days ended several days ago! I am tired of waiting for you to do something about this! Why haven't you done something about this? and here, we have to point out that you (or the blog owner) are the key player in the next step - that is, requesting the escalation to Blogger. If we reply to you Since Blogger gets 2 business days to process restores requested and appealed, we'll give them until Friday to act directly from your requests. If they have not acted by then (which seems to be the case...

Recently in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we've had direct contact with a few confirmed spammers . These are people who have submitted to the noxious 4 step spam confirmation protocol , and who have been given the full benefit of the doubt .

In the American game of baseball, each player while performing in the offensive role has three chances to swing the bat and hit the ball. If he does not connect with the ball in any way, on the third chance, he is "out" and goes to the bench. As a blogger, and when your blog is detected as hosting possible spam content , you have three strikes, too. An automated spam classification process, performed by a Blogger bot , inspects your blog, possibly with a few other blogs , and locks or deletes your blog. A manual review process, performed by people , inspects your blog again, and objectively asks whether or not it is actually hosting spam. This is done after you complete the sometimes hated 4 step review process . A second manual review process, performed by people , inspects your blog for a third time, and carefully asks whether the first two processes were correct. This is done after the review process, and is generally referred to as "escalation". This is the ...

In the modern legal system, justice is (supposedly) available to all citizens - regardless of colour, crede, or financial status - equally. In the Blogger legal system, justice (as in porn / spam classification, or URL availability ) is available to all bloggers - equally. If your blog is unjustly accused of hosting hacking, porn, and / or spam content, or if your blog is unfairly placed behind a content warning , you (the blog owner) are responsible for getting the wrong righted. Due diligence requires that the blog owner has to report any problem with any Blogger blog. Regardless of how many anxious readers your blog may serve, you the owner have to request a review, when the blog is unjustly classified, deleted or locked. And, you have to do so promptly. Blogger must serve owners of small and unpopular blogs equally, with owners of large and popular ones. The blog readers are not part of the review process. The only question is Does the blog host hacking, objectionable, p...

I've been advising folks about spam problems, and splog detection (both righteous and spurious ), for several years. Sometimes, the advice is about cleaning up the blog, and submitting it for review . Other times, it's about blogs unjustly accused of being spam . Occasionally, it's about a spam blog, that just can't be reviewed again , or maybe a old blog, that you just can't regain control .

One noticeable spam problem became visible in late 2009, thanks to yet another Blogger error. This error left a lot of bloggers ( some legitimate and others actually spammers ) reporting both confusion and indignation.

This week, we have various bloggers report that they are initially informed that a given URL is available, but the "Create a blog" wizard later shows that the same URL is not available. Whenever I try to register, after Blogger suggests "The name xxxxxxx is available to register!", I get the message "Sorry, this blog address is not available". This seems coincidental, coming after the recent occurrence of people being told that their blogs had been locked for being splogs, then told not when trying to request review. Now, you see it ("available"). Now, you don't. And it was this same way yesterday, when I identified this URL . Are you seeing this confusion? What URL are you trying to use or to register? Was this ever registered to you? Did you ever get a spam warning for this URL? You use the "Create a blog" wizard, which gives you your new blog if and only if the URL is available. If "Create a blog" (aka "Name your ...

Recently, the political blog "The Girl In Short Shorts" was judged by a number of bloggers to contain objectionable visual content, and was flagged by a substantial number of would be readers. Its readers are now greeted by an interstitial warning, and are forced to click once on a button before being able to view the blog. Many readers of the blog are now protesting in Blogger Help Forum , in ignorance of the reasons for the interstitial warning. Their actions are similar to those of the readers of The Daily Coyote, last year . To the owners of the blog: You need to contact your readers, and advise them to knock it off. You aren't bothering Blogger (this is a weekend) - but you are interfering with other bloggers being helped, because of your Denial Of Service technique (intentional or not). If you don't want your readers to have to click on the interstitial button (once per reader, only), remove the problem pictures. (Update 7/21): Rick Klau, Blogger Product Ma...

Every day, well intentioned bloggers post anxious demands in Google Blogger Help Group This person listed their blog in several forums. As an admin of two of them, I have had many complaints over it about spamming. We have blocked his address from our forums, but it seems he has many of them and he keeps spamming it hourly. Please shut this blog down. http://bigspamblog.blogspot.com So getting "bigspamblog.blogspot.com" removed should be such a simple task, but it's not. The problem is that, for everybody who reports a spam blog in BHG, someone else reports that their blog was just falsely accused of being a spam blog . Not every blog reported to be a splog actually is a splog, and not everybody reporting a splog actually is reporting a splog to get it removed. So Blogger has to verify each spam blog report, before acting on a demand posted here. Many spammers post in BHG OMG, remove bigspamblog.blogspot.com! and while we wait for Blogger to take action, they watch th...

Every day in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , we see the demurrals. Having read the definition of a spam blog, I fail quite to see how my blog can fall into this category. and My blog is not spam! It is nowhere near spam!! and WHy is spam blog xxxxxxx still online? all reports, such as these, are coming from people who don't know about fuzzy logic. You spend a lot of time publishing, and publicising , your blog. You want a blog that's interesting, innovative, up to date, and / or useful - and you want readers who appreciate your effort.

We all know that spam is an ever present problem. In our blogs, our email, and online forums, you can't go anywhere without seeing advertisements for something - frequently placed there by criminals, who aren't paying the owner of the host web site anything. Blogger, one of the largest content hosting services in the world, is not immune to this pestilence. So Blogger is trying to do something about the problem. One of the things that they are doing is, supposedly, making it harder for the spammers to publish blogs. The Settings - Publishing wizard, which lets you change the URL of your blog - to another BlogSpot URL, or to a non-BlogSpot URL - is now subject to the word puzzle aka CAPTCHA . For every change made. Re publishing your blog - whether the an external server using FTP, or to a Google server and a custom domain - is subject to stress. Every blogger using custom domain ("Another blog is already hosted at this address", "404 Server Not Found"...

Since January 2008, Blogger has been working hard to keep hacking, porn, and spam out of the blogosphere . This work is not by humans, though, but by an army of unattended computers, called by many the Blogger anti-spam bot. The anti-spam bot is not static. It has to be constantly updated, to keep up with constant activity by the producers of the many large splog farms that inhabit the blogosphere. It's going to produce false positives, as well as false negatives, and it's going to produce inconvenience to many bloggers . This week, a recently applied update appears to have taken an excessive amount of innocent blogs with it. Major inconvenience to many. Can you say "egregious false positive rate"? One blogger seems to have a way around the problem - at least to let your readers know what's going on . If you still have access to your blog, you can still post a new widget at the top of your blog that contains text to tell your readers what has happened. Usin...

I've been advising bloggers about an essential and sensitive subject - getting more traffic to their blogs - for years. Such a simple activity - post accurate, relevant, and useful articles - and advertise responsibly - the search engines will see you - and the readers will come. But there's a problem here, similar to the chicken and the egg paradox. If more search engine visibility depends upon more readers, and more readers depends upon better search engine visibility, how do you start the process? Where did the first chicken come from, anyway? With Blogger, there is a way around the paradox - the "Next Blog" link , driven by the "Recently Updated Blogs" list. When you post to your blog, your blog goes onto the "Recently Updated Blogs" list. People using the "Next Blog" link access the RUB list, and there they are reading your blog. The more that you post, the more readers you get from "Next Blog". But, there's a lim...

The "Content Warning" advisory page , appearing ahead of blogs with questionable content, protects the casual blog surfer from viewing content which may be objectionable to some readers. It's presence on any given blog is supposedly the result of voluntary action by a blog owner, who can set "Adult Content?" to "Yes", at his / her discretion. The presence of the advisory page, supposedly has slight effect upon prospective readers of the blog. Prospective readers must read the notice, and decide whether they wish to view possibly gratuitous content, and that after they click through the notice. The blog, when listed in a search hit list, will show the text of the content warning, in place of the blog description and post extract. Recent claims by some readers make it appear that this setting may be, in some cases, not set voluntarily, and that it has additional consequences. The warning page also seems to interfere with the ownership verification pro...

Apparently the blog "The Daily Coyote" was locked as a spam blog, pending investigation . The owner then convinced its readers to conduct a DOS attack against Google Blogger Help, until it was restored to operational status, in the impression that such action would hasten Bloggers reaction. It was restored 7th of April 2008, and the owner admitted the same, in a post on the blog. Obviously unlocked. Yet the useless posts continue in Blogger Help Group. This prevents other people, needing help, from being helped promptly. To the owners of the blog: You need to again email your readers, and instruct them to knock it off. You aren't bothering Blogger, but you are interfering with other bloggers being helped. Blogger has a very real problem with spam blogs . If your blog is blocked, or if it's removed, it's not done so trivially , nor are you the only one being so oppressed. Right now, Daily Coyote whinings are approaching classification as a Denial Of Service At...

In mid January 2008, Blogger started to do something about a major problem . Blogger blogs have been long used for illegal purposes - hacking, porn distribution, and spam distribution - in massive numbers. Cleaning up the hacking, porn, and spam is not an easy task - there's nothing on any one blog that says This blog is used for hacking, for porn distribution, and / or for spam distribution. Detection of such illegal blogs, like detection of malware in general , has to be done by heuristic analysis and signature comparison. Unfortunately, detection of illegal blogs, like detection of malware, using both methods, are subject to two major problems False Negative Detection - Many illegal blogs are not detected, because the authors of such blogs are very skilled at making their blogs like normal blogs. False Positive Detection - Many legitimate blogs are falsely detected, again because the authors of the illegal blogs are very skilled at making their blogs look like normal blogs...