Recovering And Protecting Your GMail Account

Blogger blog owners may have productive action, when their Blogger accounts are successfully hacked through an attack on their GMail accounts.

GMail account owners can get detailed instructions on recovering a successfully hacked account, and on preventing future hacking attacks from being successful. Some of the instructions are specific to GMail use - but overall, Blogger account owners will benefit from their use.

To benefit from the GMail instructions, one should consider the differences between Blogger, email, and Google accounts.

GMail provides instructions for recovering hacked / stolen GMail accounts.

Gmail Account Recovery: Gmail Account Recovery and Security provides complete and detailed instructions for recovering a hacked and stolen GMail email account.

The Recovery instructions include specific mentions of Disabled / Suspended accounts, successfully Stolen accounts, and accounts locked or deleted because of Underage owners.

Accompanying the recovery advice is Gmail help and information: How NOT To Get Hacked. These are instructions for preventing a recurrence of a reported problem. This includes discussion of using a strong and secure password, identifying hacking techniques that involve the account owner, and preventing attacks which are conducted using the computer or network in use by the account owner.

Prevention instructions are similarly focused on GMail account security.

The Prevention instructions, many which are common sense issues to any IT professional or security expert, are specifically written to apply to GMail account owners. There may be additional issues which apply in general, to Blogger accounts - and specifically, to Blogger accounts which are based on non GMail email accounts.

There are a few differences between Blogger blog ownership and GMail account ownership, which will cause issues that cannot be easily resolved by Blogger Support, or by GMail Support, to the satisfaction of the (former) blog owner.

GMail accounts, unlike Blogger accounts, do not contain transferrable assets.

GMail accounts are, by nature, single owner - and ownership of a GMail account is never transferred. In contrast, Blogger blogs can be under team ownership - and ownership can be transferred.

• Intentional team blog ownership. Team blog ownership can cause problems with loss of blog control, when all known blog administrators (accidentally or intentionally) remove themselves as administrators, leaving an unknown administrator.
• Intentional transfer of control. A blog owner may assign administrator status to another person, voluntarily - then later regret his decision.
• Un intentional transfer of control. A blog owner may assign administrator status to another person, voluntarily - and the other person may then remove the former owner administrator status.
• Ownership theft after account hacking. A hacker, having temporarily gained control of a Blogger account, may transfer ownership of a blog to another Blogger account.

All of these scenarios are regarded as simple transfer of blog ownership, by Blogger Support.

Though maybe not preferred by the (former) blog owner, the blog in question will now be under control of another person. It's possible that some of these scenarios are considered by Google Security, when reviewing Blogger / Google accounts after hacking activity is detected.

Blogger accounts based on non GMail email have typical third party issues.

Blogger accounts, based on non GMail email addresses, will be subject to the typical uncertainty which accompanies any third party service in Blogger. Some details may be involve the email provider, while others will involve Blogger - and arbitrating between the two will be the responsibility of the Blogger account owner.

Owners of Blogger accounts which are based on non GMail email addresses will need to contact the providers of the actual email service, for resolution of some of these issues.

In general though, the GMail Account Loss Prevention and Recovery instructions provide good advice, for any Blogger account owner.