Thursday, February 18, 2016

Now you see me, now you don't!

Gracie

Well that was odd. At around 11.00 this morning my whole blog disappeared. I had an email from Blogger to tell me so. In fact the email said that they had removed my blog because they believed it violated their terms of service with regards to phishing.

I looked for it. All six years worth of content vanished, nothing in it's place.
I was indignant - I'm not a scammer! I'm just a humble artist posting drawings, paintings and random thoughts.

I looked for a phone number, a helpline, an email address to contact... none of the above. Just a little 'click here' type button on my blogger dashboard where my blog once stood saying 'appeal'. 

I clicked appeal. Then waited, and wondered what else I could do. Nothing.

I wondered how long I would have to wait, and would my blog come back, and would all that historic content ever come back or had it been banished into hyperspace forever?

I did the only thing any reasonable person could do in such a situation - I put a little pity post out on Facebook. Help! Nasty google! Has anybody else experienced such a thing?
I did confess that it was a first world problem, but Facebook friends are so good at making you feel supported in times of modern angst such as missing blogs, computer viruses and the like.

And then I got on with life, because I am finishing framing 36 paintings this week for my March exhibition at the Russell Gallery in Putney - exciting!

Roughly five hours after my blog disappeared I received this email from Google -

"Hello, We have received your appeal regarding your blog http://haideejo.blogspot.com/. Upon further review, we have determined that your blog was mistakenly marked as a TOS violator by our automated system and, as such, we have reinstated your blog. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused in the meantime and thank you for your patience as we completed our review process. Thank you for understanding. Your sincerely, The Blogger Team"

Hoorah! And the whole lovely blog came back, with an apology too. And so to celebrate here are a couple of sketches from this week.

Welcome back blog and welcome back lovely subscribers! Normal service can now be resumed. Whatever that is.


Oscar in the car

4 comments:

  1. Haidee-Jo, Wow so sorry that happened to you. I imagine the panic that you must have felt! Glad blog is back! Little adrenaline shot there!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Phew! what a relief. I look at my blog like a diary. It's fun to look back at it

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your words!

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