Sunday, September 20, 2009

[housekeeping] blog under attack


Well, all I can say is that the only surprise is that it did not happen before.

Basically, this blog has been reported as spam and I'd put money on who it was who did it. All right, I'm not going to worry about that now but for the moment, this is the state of play:

1. My blog will apparently be reviewed by a human within 20 days, if I appeal, which I have now done and during that time, I may not put up a new post;

2. Update - they have now told me it doesn't look like spam, the bots have apologized but a human will still review it and restrictions still apply. If they decide that the blog is spam, then it and with it the 5236 posts, will be lost.

3. This is a very real possibility because for their spam bots to pick up on something in the first place, then something has been put onto my site and it's possibly still going to be there when they check.

4. This check of theirs, now I've appealed, could be any time from now until 20 days hence. Therefore, N.O. might suddenly disappear during that time.

5. If you come here and the site has gone, my other Nourishing Obscurity is here and this blog will continue over there until I set up my own domain. So, to reiterate, if this blog disappears, then the Wordpress version of this site will be where you'd go if you wished to read my posts.

6. My own domain has been in the pipeline for some time - there is a host and I'd be using Wordpress - it would also be called Nourishing Obscurity and the url would contain that name in some form. The reason I haven't done this until now is that Blogger/Google has been pretty good and the blog's been going nicely.

7. Therefore, it depends on the actions of Blogger/Google in the next three weeks.

8. Meanwhile, the pesky business of transporting my old posts to Wordpress will go ahead.

As I wrote at the start, it surprises me that it's not happened before now. Stay tuned, people.

Update

9. The transfers have begun. I plan to blog as normal at either of the two sites.

30 comments:

  1. James- This is an outrage!

    I think that you should give your other url out incase your blog is shut down.


    I can't get over this!

    What dirty pool!

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  2. Shall I write to Blogger on your behalf?

    We should ALL hound Blogger.

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  3. Apparently it's not too difficult to save the entire template and all the posts onto your hard drive, just in case. If it doesn't work out, then you just start again with a new 'blog using 'blogger (The Remittance Man once had to do this).

    Heck, I once did it myself when I was trying to fix something else and it worked, even though I don't know much about all this stuff.

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  4. Uber, Mark, it's already in the pipeline and I'll ask my mate tomorrow about saving to hard drive - I actually have a separate harddrive in a third house, just in case.

    Many of my old posts are already over at Wordpress, as I was expecting this to happen in 2007 for certain reasons.

    I would have been shattered a year ago - now I'm just ready. Nourishing Obscurity will continue - you're not escaping me that easily, people! :)

    Thanks for that.

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  5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkVkyeUbsKA&eurl=http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?s=0jUdYR&d=ww2010.weblog

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  6. If you have to move James, please make sure your new domain gets registered at the Witanagemot too, I know a lot of bloggers enjoy reading your posts even if they rarely post comments.

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  7. I'm sure it'll be fine, James. Maybe I'm being naive, but when a human does get round to looking at the site, it'll be immediately obvious that the complaint wasn't justified...

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  8. Quiet Man, Alex - thanks and shall do.

    Dearieme - how do you find those things?!

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  9. The mechanism is dead easy to save entire blog, from your Dashboard just go to Settings and "Export blog". However, your blog with its age and all its images may be a very big file. I save my own entire blog every month; but also save each individual month as an html file ("File, Save As" at top left of browser menu bar, tho may vary depending what browser you use); and also save a print-out; plus everything in an online storage vault too... Belt, braces and another pair of trousers entirely underneath the first pair :-) A lot of trouble to go to for my ramblings or rubbish, I know :-). I suspect you'll be fine in a few days though - just someone's nonsense of a software system picking up words it doesn't like. If all else fails you can always ask the CIA, MI5 or the KGB to send you one of their copies of everything :-))

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  10. James I am gutted for you......I wish I had better knowledge to help you....

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  11. James, just saw it and I can imagine how you feel. It's ridiculous! I'm with Uber. Shall we all get in touch with blogger? I use BlogBackupOnline.com. I don't know if this might help. We're all with you.

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  12. This is strange! I have some text at the top of your web-page in blue and black saying 'you flagged this blog as having objectionable content'.

    No I f*cking didn't!


    Site

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  13. I hope it gets sorted very soon for you..this is outrageous...!!

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  14. I don;t understand. What on earth is objectionable at this site and why would anyone do this. Blogger are appauling. I hope this resolves itself soon. Sorry to read this.

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  15. Just when we find out that prisoners are allowed to blog from inside, a civilian outside faces being stopped from blogging. It's a crazy world!

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  16. James, if you have a thread at Blogger Help going please give us URL so we can all stomp over there and give them a blast!

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  17. You would think that blogger would be as tight as a duck's arse.....I have to say though the fall back site looks great...

    How can someone hack in?

    TC

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  18. I hope everything is resolved quickly. The Poor Mouth was tagged as a spam blog some time back. Luckily it was sorted very quickly

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  19. Interesting that the music post for the evening removed itself back to draft.

    Someone [maybe the bots] is inside my site. It might be Blogger removing the posts or it may be someone else. As soon as they're taken away, I put them back up but I can't keep that up all night.

    I don't know any url to send a message to Blogger, those who were kind enough to offer to write. Perhaps Welshcakes' suggestion.

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  20. Jams, we cross-posted. That's encouraging. Could you post in the interim?

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  21. James not pleasant- obviously some bots have gone mad. I've just saved my blog to the harddrive in case it happens to me too- have to say stuff like this makes me more nad more inclined to get my own site like Dave Cole has. As soon as a human looks at it should be as easy as pie to spot that this isn't spam!

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  22. James,
    I was able to save my old blog (first iteration), posts, comments, and all in one fell swoop. I understand you've been expecting this, so get ready! Just in case the unthinkable happens...

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  23. I could post but everything I did was subject to an anti spam password. It was fixed in a couple of days

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  24. Well, that's positive, gents. Uber, thanks too.

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  25. So much for free speech!

    There really are some cretins out there, good luck James, hope it works out.

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  26. Andrew,

    Good plan. However I would be interested in how you planned to restore from these files if your blog was deleted.

    TEV,

    Now we know who did it. :)

    James,

    It could be anything. Osama, sorry Obama is asking for any negative sites to be raised. You have done many posts on him. As well as many anti PC posts where whingy whiney people can get their power from anonymously clicking a button on Blogger. Google themselves being very PC doesn't help.

    Its free for a reason. Get your own hosted domain.

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  27. Hmm, bad news indeed. It seems you have had some good advice already; if there is anything I can do in support - writing to Google springs to mind - please let me know.

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  28. Angus, Lord T - thanks.

    Ian - interestingly, your site popped up in one of those autothingies in my Wordpress not long ago so I'll have to get over and see if you've posted.

    Thanks too.

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