I got the following email today:
Hello,
Your blog at: http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/ has been
identified as a potential spam blog. To correct this, please request
a review by filling out the form at
http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=30897652
Your blog will be deleted in 20 days if it isn't reviewed, and your
readers will see a warning page during this time. After we receive
your request, we'll review your blog and unlock it within two
business days. Once we have reviewed and determined your blog is not
spam, the blog will be unlocked and the message in your Blogger
dashboard will no longer be displayed. If this blog doesn't belong to
you, you don't have to do anything, and any other blogs you may have
won't be affected.
We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam
detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is
flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using
this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage,
bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of
to spammers. For more information, please see Blogger Help:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577
Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our
spam-fighting efforts.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
P.S. Just one more reminder: Unless you request a review, your blog
will be deleted in 20 days. Click this link to request the review:
http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=30897652
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[The above copied as an html table and on my computer the right side is cut off. But I think you can get the gist without have to read every word so I don't think it is worth the time to fix it.]
Of course I was suspicious that this was just a phishing scam. In fact, a google bot had been by twice today looking up phishing scam on my blog. But I figured I could follow the link and see where it took me. If it was phishing, it was far more sophisticated and grammatically correct than most I get.
That led me to this page:
It looked to be a real blogger site, it didn't ask for any information, it already had my email, so I've sent it in.
So, if I disappear, this is why. Hopefully their systems work and I won't disappear. But I do now have to put in word verification to post on my own blog.
It looked to be a real blogger site, it didn't ask for any information, it already had my email, so I've sent it in.
Yes, after checking links this looks like it authentically came from Blogger too. One possibility: someone deciding to harass you by hitting the "Flag as objectionable" link in the navbar at the top and/or reporting you blog as spam.
ReplyDeleteJust in case, I'd recommend backing up your entire blog -- pretty easy to do in Settings.
Yup, this is where a fellow I know lost his blog. Had to use way-back to reconstruct. Not a pleasant way to spend computing time...
ReplyDeleteOf all the AK blogs that could have been picked for a spam scam like this, why WDIK?
ReplyDeleteWell, I hope you solve this problem.
ReplyDeleteYou see Steve, cursing Sarah Palin leads nowhere pleasant. :D
I'm trusting Google to see that a human responded. Googlebots have checked out a few more posts since then.
ReplyDeleteMel, I already have the Google Archive stuff on. I also googled, "Back Up Blog on Mac" and got several sites. The one that looked best recommended DownThemAll. I downloaded it and it downloaded, I think, all the links from my blog. Very fast. But I'm not sure if I have copies of the pages or the links to them.
And I didn't have to fill in the Captcha letters to preview this.