01 August 2008

blogger tards lock wst... for being a possible spam blog (splog)

imagine this, around 5:30 pm cdt on thursday 31 july 2008, we were working on a post and at the same time we received an email from the "blogger team:"

Hello,

Your blog at: http://wesawthat.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=[removed]

Your blog will be deleted within 20 days if it isn't reviewed, and you'll be unable to publish posts during this time. After we receive your request, we'll review your blog and unlock it within two business days. 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, you won't be able to use your blog. Click this link to request the review: http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=[removed]
so we immediately requested a review.


we've already had to undergo a spam review a year or two ago. back then, blogger/google werent locking blogs...

we had to do a word verification before blogger would publish each post. apparently, blogger/google can keep track of every youtube video you've ever uploaded and.or viewed or every search request you've ever made, but cant keep track of which blogs they have previously flagged, reviewed and cleared.

one interesting tidbit of information we ran across -- it seems that recently blogger has "locked" a number of anti-obama blogs. some bloggers suspect that obama supporters are going around flagging or emailing complaints to blogger suggesting that these anti-obama blogs are splogs. see bloggasm 'who's responsible for shutting down a number of anti-obama blogspot accounts?' as well as uppity woman 'anti obama blogs locked due to false "spam" reporting.'

we're not accusing the obama supporters of being responsible for our "lock-out" because, although we do have some larry sinclair posts and we do receive larry sinclair and obama googlers daily -- we're not exclusively an anti-obama blog. we dont support john mcmadman mccain either. for the record, this fall; if hes on the ballot here, we will be voting for chuck baldwin, the constitution party's presidential nominee.
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thanks go out to larry sinclair for mentioning our lock-out on his blog
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UPDATE: since larry sinclair posted about our lockout, blogger has released the following announcement stating that they "miscategorized some blogs as spam and have inconvenienced an unfortunate number of users. we assure you that no data is lost, and that we will restore these blogs very shortly." ~ link and "we've noticed that a number of users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can't post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble." see 'spam fridays.' wst... was unlocked and service restored not long afterward as well.
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