Oops ...

Google Can Be So Prejudgy

O for a googlebot of ire

One blog associated with my blogger account seems to have been accused by Google of having done something that is not liked by Blogger.

The email address that is linked to the blog in question was not completely signed up to about 20 email newsletters (probably less), which seem to publish mostly very informative stuff.

Apparently, the email lists had received a request to sign up the email address in question. However, no confirmation of subscription were submitted, so actually the email address is not a subscriber to those lists.

None of the content was actually shared, so I don't really see what the problem was.  When I share stuff, I always give with full and proper citations or links to the best known source.

Strangely, I received a bunch of "confirmation messages" from the email lists into my blogger "Posts" bin. Very odd.

Not sure what triggered the temporary block or ban on the site. When I confirmed my ID to Google, all of those confirmations messages disappeared. I don't know where they are, which is just as well since I did not actually confirm subscribing to those lists.

In any case, it's something I'll be sure to avoid repeating.

Secret Internet Lesson Learned: If you spend a good deal of time online, make sure you check your email accounts daily to ensure that nothing weird is happening. And if you suspect something is happening, be sure to report it accordingly and take appropriate measures to secure your account by changing your password regularly to something very good.  And of course you should be backing up your data separately, but that's another discussion, and you can surely google it, at least until I pump out the ultimate guide to data backups for dumbdumbs.

I love you, Google! :) You are my friend!