Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Adventures of locked blogs: another cyberterror

Yesterday I wanted to update my post about Karima, to my dismay I discover that the 'publish post' button had disapeared from my dashboard and instead there was the following messsage:

"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive. You won't be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review. We'll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than two business days. If we don't hear from you, though, we will remove your blog from Blog*Spot within a few weeks. We'll contact you after we review your blog."

It was the first time I realised that my 4+ years of blogging were held hostage; good and bad memories, friends, experiences, everything could be lost in one click. This event opened my eyes to the need of backing up which I've been wanting to pursue but kept postponing. Now it had become an urgent matter.

Obviously since I'm posting today, it means my blog has been unlocked. It was a good coincidence in a way to have filled out the form just when people were waking up in the US and Google offices we opening. I could see someone from Google going through my blog and by 0300 AM my time I received this email:

Hello,
Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so thatit will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger andsign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for yourpatience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team


I guess I was lucky but I did spend an agonising 12hrs thinking about how to save my blog. People on 3 continents at least were busy helping me, and I want to thank them from my heart.

PH who personally backed up all my blog patiently on his hard drive, thank you 3azizi. Then Chris who got me in touch with Ezou who offered several websites and solutions (for example here) Thank you gentlemen. They all walked me step-by-step (yes I'm technically challenged :P). I also want to thank all of you my friends who left comments and tips here.

Internet is amazing and you find friends all over this planet: Africa, Asia and America all connected during those precious hours.

Although, the Blogger Team did their job quite promptly, I feel slightly disappointed at being let down so quickly, what if I did not have such great friends ? Would I loose all my precious online moments in the wink of an eye?

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

About time to declare "War on cyberterrorism".

To wipe out this evil from the face of Earth!

Drown the spammers in their own excrement. Flog the blog police publicly. Nail the adware makers to the wall.

> said...

Yeppe! Welcome Back.


I think they really just unblocked your blog because they where afraid of my march:P

Power 2 Tha People!

Highlander said...

Adam ;) he he he merci!

Lost Libyano thanks man, how come I can't access your blog ? you promised me not to delete anymore:(

Maya M said...

I am happy that you succeeded to rescue your blog. It would be a loss not only to you but to many people if you hadn't.
Kill me if I can figure out why exactly your blog fell under suspicion to be a spam blog!
Personally, I backup from time to time because I fear that one day I'll see a message, "Blogger.com decided to limit free use to (say) 3 years, now please pay $ ... if you want to keep your blog."
Paranoia, isn't it?

Highlander said...

Thanks Maya :), that's another fear I have that Blogger will limit access yes! I'm paranoid too :P

Brave Heart said...

i was away from this propaganda, alhmidulilh ur blog survive. this one the disadvantages of relying on virtual technology isn't it?

Anonymous said...

H,
I wasn't aware of your predicament as I wasn't online the whole day yesterday. I am glad everything has been resolved. Plus, I had no idea there's a blog back up web page. Anyways, I find that there are pop ups whenever I visit your blog as well as Adam's. It's annoying, but I had to live it ;-)

BHCh said...

Yeah, what's that about pop-ups on your blog? Could they be the reason it fell under suspicion?

Highlander said...

Hi Red and Shlemazl, the problem is I don't see the popups from my side neither when I open Adam's blog... this is weird. Anyway I made some new posts and published them but they are not showing anymore since Blogger's 8th birthday party.
They are slowly pushing me away it seems ...

Highlander said...

Oh cool my new post finally came up it's almost 2pm here and I posted it at 10 am this morning.

Anonymous said...

H, pop ups still here. I've won something it seems. Bloody spam!

Anonymous said...

I never see them popups, Red. Have you switched to Firefox yet?

Yeah, what's that about pop-ups on your blog? Could they be the reason it fell under suspicion?
ROTFL!

PH said...

@ highlander :

"thank you 3azizi"

You're welcome.

@ rien :

The pop ups come from webstats and you can find them on all the blogger blogs that use it ( wordpress has limits on the functionality of Java scripts for security reasons or so I've read ), I usually use the popup blocker to block them all .....

salaam

Highlander said...

Adam LOL @ ROTFL thanks man :P

Anonymous said...

Adam, I am currently using Netscape Navigator 9. Just as good as Firefox. Funny, after complaining about the pop ups, they've miraculously disappeared!

PH,
some pop ups are just stubborn, even with pop up blocker. Everything has been resolved now. No worries.