Good thoughts for Reg, and a shout out for your suggestions

In what I sincerely hope will be a temporary fix here for him, I have replaced the links here for Reg Adkins’ Elemental Truths blog with links to Faith Based Counseling, where Reg had initially begun his blogging adventures.

Earlier today, Reg found that his Elemental Truths site had somehow been high jacked! When you follow links to his site, they take you to something that looks like a political advertisement written by someone other than Reg!

Elemental Truths is hosted on Google’s Blogger platform, and thus far, Reg has been unsuccessful in getting his own account back. Absolutely unbelievable and inconceivable. Reg has written a cease and desist request in the comments, and the hijacker has the audacity to publish them while continuing to ignore his request!

I would be crushed if something like this happened for the three sites I now write for, and my heart truly aches for what Reg must be going through.

This is the first time I have heard of such a thing, and it really causes you to think about the true worth and value of something that is “free” as is Google’s Blogger platform. If anyone reading knows how to deal with this, and has a suggestion we can pass on to Reg, please share it here. Mahalo nui loa.

Comments

[Pete Aldin]

Unbelievable. What can he do to fix this? (What can we do to avoid it?)

[Leah Maclean]

Ah yuk!! Thanks for letting us all know Rosa and Reg I feel for you at the moment.

Unfortunately this is not the first time that a Blogger based blog has been hijacked (and I suspect that it won't be the last). There are stories of some people who had their Blogger account disabled by Blogger/Google for abusing the Terms of Service only to find out that they were doing the right thing but the site had been hijacked.

The only way to resolve this is via Google's/Blogger's support process. They were engaged by Reg to provide that site, whether free or not, and they are required to live up to their end of the Terms of Service.

In response to Pete's comment about how to avoid this .... the best way is to have full control and ownership over your domain name, the DNS records and where the domain is hosted. If someone wants to try hard enough to hack your site then there might be a way but if you have control over it the the chances are minimised.

Go get 'em Reg!

[Leah Maclean]

I'm not sure what Reg has done in contacting Blogger/Google but here is a link that might help with more information.

Blogger Help Group - http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help

[Rosa Say]

Thanks so much Leah! I'll send Reg a note so he'll be sure to see this.