Blogger.com blog hacked - what do you do?

What do you do if you have a hosted blog that gets hacked? For example if your content disappears and it gets replaced by a splog (a spam blog)?

This is exactly what happened to my friend Reg of Elemental Truths. His Blogger.com blog was suddenly replaced by a bunch of political garbage.

Well, if this blog was hacked, TypePad.com does have support. But sometimes you get what you pay with, and with free Google owned Blogger.com it's very hard to even find where to send a support request, question, or plea for help.

Eventually Reg got his blog back -- the story in his words follow, and later this week we'll post how to protect your blog from terrible events like this one.

It was a sultry day. The air was host and thick with humidity. Distant thunderstorms sent little circular ripples, crashing minute breakers against the glass wall of my iced tea.

I had heard the weather was worse out west. The storms had spawned rolling black outs up and down the west coast. Even the techno-jockey fortresses which housed the accumulated work, sweat and tears of thousands of bloggers from around the world were falling over like so many delicately stacked dominoes.

Then it came. The message. It took the form of an email, cryptic and compelling.

The subject line read, "Reg, we need to discuss something."

It was from Greg Balanko-Dickson.

I knew Greg. Which is to say, I knew who he was. Greg is a business coach. He's worked on at least three continents that I knew of and had written two successful books. All in all, what I really knew about Greg was that he was out of my league.

Greg's message about my site Elemental Truths was simple, clear and to the point. It went like this.

"What I saw there the other day is not at all what I see today. Can you explain?"

Puzzled I checked on the site right away.

Greg was right. What was there was made by no hand of mine. My heart sunk.

Right there, in front of God and everybody was the vilest of blog animals. The "Splog." And, it was showing up on my site!

I spent the next mind numbing hours banging away at my keyboard trying to get somebody (anybody) to explain to me what was going on.

At first I thought, this must be some kind of glitch. So, I made several attempts to contact the author that had landed on my site.

After several non responses, I got the feeling that something sinister was going on.

So, I started a more formal series of contacts including a carefully worded cease and desist order. All the while, I continued my attempts to reach Google, Blogger, AdSense, Kontera and anybody else I was doing business with to see if they had any insight.

I started to feel like John crying out in the wilderness.

I sent out help requests and advisories to most anyone I could think of who might be able to help.

The outpouring of support was really kind of touching. But, no one had any solutions.

I found it strange that in the community of technology we were all so comfortable in, so few of us had any idea how to address a problem that impacted the understructure of the realm we were inhabiting.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure how, one of my messages finally filtered through the defensive contact mechanisms around the Blogger Help system and I got the following message.

"Hi there,

Thanks for writing in. I looked at your account and was able to find the source of the error. I have fixed the problem, so you should now be able to view your blog without difficulty. Please let me know if you continue to experience difficulties.

Sincerely,
Danish
The Blogger Team"

And, just like that, everything was back in place. Well,
except my blood-pressure of course. But, with some medication
and therapy, I hope to get that under control again soon.

Comments

[I-bibliophile]

My blog www.i.bibliophile.blogspot.com with 1200 posts hacked yesterday.. although I ve managed to get back my url but that's the only thing left for me.. all hardwork has gone into drains

[T Demop, Blogging for Business]

I-bibliophile,
Sorry you got hacked.
I'll be writing some anti hack tips in the next few days. Backing up your blog material is on the list.
You can probably recover some of your material from Google's cache and the Internet Wayback Machine

[Greg Balanko-Dickson]

I am so glad to hear that Reg got that sorted out. That can be so frustrating and annoying.

Looking forward to reading your hacking tips. Make sure to let me know and I will link to it Ted. I am enjoying your book! I finally am getting around to reading it.

;-)

[The Hairy Beast]

The Beast's wordpress.com blog has never been hacked but he does get inappropriate comments.

In reference to his most recent work - he has been blogging on Saturday's Great White Shark attack on a seal in the bathing area off Nauset Beach in Cape Cod (not far from where Furry John's parents live, Ted). Some wit (obviously mistaking The Hairy Beast for gay code) quoth:

"I have never seen a shark but you should check out the whale in my pants".

[Reg of Elemental Truths]

Hey Ted,
Thanks for running with this. I'd like to point out to your readers that I was trying to sound dime story novel in the intro. I don't always write that badly. The suggestions I'm getting so far are to move Elemental Truths to a dot com, typepad or wordpress. But, I'm going to wait to see your take on things before I commit completely.

[T Demop, Blogging for Business]

Greg,
Glad you're enjoying "What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting"! I've got a pile of books I'm slowly working my way though (and quite ahppily I'll add!).

Hairy One,
I imagine you get lots of bizarre comments,

Reg,
You write extremely well and I think it's obvious even to people that don't know you that you were just having fun.