Act Immediately, When Invited

Some moments come fleetingly, and never again.

One such moment may be, when you receive a blog membership invitation.

The purpose of this message is to inform you that xxxxxxx has invited you to join their private blog "xxxxx xxxxx". To accept this invitation, click on the button below.

or

The purpose of this message is to inform you that yyyyyyy has invited you to contribute to their blog "yyyyy yyyyy". To accept this invitation, click on the button below.

Unless you know the blog owner, this may be your one chance.

If you get an invitation to be a designated reader on a private blog - or an author on either a private or team blog - decide, and act as soon as possible.

Any invitation that you get will be temporary. Blog membership invitations expire, after a fixed amount of time.

Accept the invitation, to view and note the URL.

If the blog is private, and you accept the invitation as a reader, make a note of the URL too.

Long ago, you might get a "preview link" in the invitation - allowing you to view the blog, and bookmark / copy the URL for later. The "preview link" feature was abused by too many owners - and appears to be gone now.

No preview = no URL until after you accept the invitation.

Become an author, on a team blog!

Become a reader, on a private blog!



There's a limited amount of detail, in the invitation.

How useful is either invitation, if you don't accept, when viewed later? You can get the owner name (as provided by the owner), and the blog title - and that's it.

• Invitations contain only the author name, the blog title, and a membership token.
• A reader invitation, for a private blog, may not produce an entry in the dashboard "My blogs" list.
• Both author and reader invitations will expire.

Act promptly, for best result.

If you get an invitation, and you file it away so you can "think about it", don't think about it too long.

Once the token expires - and if you don't know the owner - you'll not be able to contact the owner. And until you accept the invitation - and actually view then bookmark the blog - you won't find out the URL.

Act quickly - or never.

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If you get an invitation to be an author on a private or team #Blogger blog, or a reader on a private blog, act promptly. Invitations expire too soon - they contain few details - and won't be very useful later.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/blogger/z-lKeqO-ssA

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Deleting Your Blogger Account

We see regular queries about deleting a Blogger account, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger.

A Blogger account is simply a Google account, used to publish or read blogs. If you want to delete a Blogger account, you need to delete the Google account.

If you are using your Google account for other services, maybe GMail, Google+, and / or YouTube, you won't want to delete your Google account. But you can make the Blogger portion of your Google account invisible, to the public.

With a little planning, you can make your Blogger account empty and invisible, to the world.

Delete, or transfer ownership of, any blogs that you own.

If you have any Blogger blogs, you'll want to delete them - but plan the deletion, for best results. Alternately, you may prefer to transfer ownership of your blog(s), to a different Blogger / Google account.

Edit your profile, and remove all personal details - and make it private.

If you're using a Blogger profile on your Blogger account, edit your Blogger profile, and remove any personal details that people surf - like Location, Work, and Additional Information.

Remove all personal details.



Then, uncheck "Show my profile". With your blogs gone, and your profile empty and private, there won't be any way for folks to find your Blogger account.

Uncheck "Show my profile", as a final step.



If you have a Google+ profile, check that, too.

If you are using a Google+ profile, with your Google account, edit check your posts and your Google+ profile, for any mention of your Blogger blogs.

Finally, don't publish any Blogger blogs - and you won't have a Blogger account. This may be part of the process of making yourself anonymous.

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Some blog owners decide to delete their #Blogger accounts, without understanding that you can't separate Blogger from Google. A Blogger account cannot be deleted, without deleting the Google account.

With a little effort and planning, though, you can remove all traces of a Blogger account - and leave the Google account intact.

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Everybody Won't Get Proper Notice About Their Blog

One problem that we're seeing in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken involves blog owners, who recently discovered their blogs deleted or locked, by Blogger - and without any notice received.

The account actions may be required with the blog deleted for a suspected TOS Violation, such as hosting malware, porn, or spam - or locked because of "suspicious activity" on the Blogger account.

Why was my blog deleted? I never got proper notice!

Too many people depend upon email notification - and may not receive proper notification, in all cases.

Blogger provides a dashboard based malware / porn / spam classification notification / recovery process, which may not be available for everybody. Similar to malware / porn / spam classification, there will be issues with DMCA violation notification.

This is also a problem when accounts are locked for "suspicious activity", and when blogs are locked for hosting malicious third party gadgets.

There are several reasons why some blog owners won't get notification of their blogs being deleted or locked, by the various Blogger / Google security processes.

Nobody should expect advance warning of any action being taken.

Besides notification limitations, nobody should expect to get advance warning of action being taken - as this would simply encourage the intentional spammers to never request review. Intentional spammers, if permitted, would play 3 Card Monte, endlessly, with their spammy blogs.

Both the notification, and advance warning, limitations contribute to confusion about the various Blogger / Google security recovery options. All email based notifications may not be properly delivered.

The owner of any email account, which may not deliver email properly, is still responsible for reading any important email messages.

Some blogs are owned by accounts which use intentionally bogus email addresses.

Too many Blogger blogs are owned by Blogger accounts which are based on inactive or nonexistent email addresses. Owners of these blogs will never see email notification, when they - intentionally or not - make themselves anonymous.

Some email clients may misfile an incoming email message.

In other cases, some people may get the email notifying them of problems - but their email program may misfile the email, in a folder which they may not check, regularly. In some odd cases, somebody other than the owner may get the email.

Blogs owned by teams will be subject to action against any one member.

In team blog ownerships, any blog owned by the team is subject to action, against the Blogger / Google account, used by any team member. Blogs affected will simply disappear from the dashboards of all team members - with no opportunity provided for appeal or review.

Some blog owners maintain too many Blogger and email accounts.

Finally, too many blog owners maintain multiple Blogger / Google accounts, and are not completely sure which Blogger account may own a given blog. These owners may not even see the dashboard based "Deleted Blogs" button / link, because they will be logged in to the wrong Blogger account.

Each blog owner is responsible for any problems, regardless of cause.

Not all of the above scenarios are entirely the fault of the blog owners - but the blog owners are the ones who will have to deal with the resulting problems. It's possible that this may seem unfair - but it's reality.

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Anonymity, Your BirthDate, And Your New Blogger / Google Account

Not all new Blogger blog owners understand why they are asked for their birthdate, when they setup a Blogger or Google account.

Some folks see this as a violation of their right to privacy, and enter a fake birthdate. Some real serious privacy enthusiasts might enter "01/01/01", just to get through the setup process - maybe intending to correct it, later.

Nobody entering "01/01/01", for one's birthdate, suspects that claiming such a birthdate makes them - in 2013 - appear to be 12 years of age. Unfortunately, 12 years is below the minimum age for owning a Blogger blog.

Since Blogger / Google tries to protect the young people on the Internet from inadvertently exposing themselves - or their families or friends - to unknown dangers, people who may appear to be of insufficient age are subject to having their Blogger / Google accounts, and Blogger blogs, deleted or locked.

If you entered a fake birthdate some time ago, and now find your account or blog locked or deleted, you need to prove your age to Google - and you should do this promptly.

The Google Accounts document Frequently Asked Questions about Google Account and Age Requirements explains how you do this. The process of verifying your age / birthdate is not convenient - and some privacy enthusiasts may claim that it too violates their privacy rights - but it is necessary, to let you correct your birthdate - when you are legitimately of legal age.

Now, you have to hope that you did not, intentionally or mistakenly, also provide a bogus email account as your Blogger / Google account name / recovery email address. The process of identifying yourself as the owner (former, nominally underage) of a given Blogger / Google account is easier to do, when you have access to the email account stated as the account recovery email address.

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