Tuesday, August 18, 2009

WHO STOLE MY LIBRARY?

WAAAAHHH!!!

There is a thief on the prowl at Blogger.com.
And that nasty, nameless fellow has stolen my entire library. Tonight when I sat down at my dashboard, ready to scroll down my reading list and catch up the latest posts, there was NOTHING there. Except this AUDACIOUS, BLATANT, BOLD LIE:

"You are not currently following any blogs. Use the "add" button below to enter blogs you'd like to follow in your Reading List."

EXCUSE ME? Of course I am following a lot of blogs. I collect readable blogs like I buy readable books - after a lot of browsing, and with a lot of anticipation that I will spend many happy hours reading and recolleceting. I have (had?) painstakingly acquired and added to my library of blogs (and books - but that is in the real world) over the months.

And now there's nothing there? Virtual emptiness? All that hard work and copy-paste urls and clicking-of-follow-publicly-button down the drain? WHY and HOW? Can anyone please explain? Where do I go to file an FIR? Report the theft? Waaaah!!! Or should I just bawl my lungs out???

Once bitten, twice shy. Now, this time, I am keeping a back-up. It will take me some time before I will be able to trace all the urls of the blogs I was following and 'add' them to my list again. (HOW BLOODY TIME-CONSUMING AND UNFAIR!). But I will write them down in my good old-fashioned real-world pen-and-paper diary, a precaution against future virtual theft.

HAS THIS HAPPENED TO YOU, TOO?

26 comments:

Suko said...

Sucharita, hopefully that was only a temporary problem for you! Maybe the blogs you follow will be "returned"?

Nona said...

Oops! Check it again like Suko.

And do not store it the traditional way using paper and pen! Cut and paste it into a text file on the computer. Send a copy to one of your emails. In case of a nasty surprise in the future, you can recreated it easily.

Meira said...

Good lord! Why is blogger becoming so nasty? It used to be so pleasant! You could also try adding the links on Google Reader. It uses the google account. But sheesh! I would cry if that happened. To either the blogs or books!

pradipwritenow said...

Sometimes due to a virus attack this may happen also. Sometimes back starnge things like my blogger follow list vanished. I checked with my system and there was something like trozan virus. So after checking this you may seek the helpline of Blogger to solve your problem.

Suko said...

Sometimes the problem lies with Blogger. They may be experiencing "technical difficulties" of some sort. Hopefully, the lost blogs will suddenly reappear! :)

sujata sengupta said...

Ohh thats a mean thing to happen!! But I feel its a blogger thing and when you login again later you will find them there. I used to keep a copy of stuff on paper and one day the boss said,"how low tech can you get?" ouch!!but cant help feeling paper is still the safest!

praveena said...

I think Nona's idea is cool... e-mail won't get lost unless your mail was hacked into and password changed so you can't access it anymore!! Who knows what extent the thief could go to!! ;-)[I hope it is a temp prob with blogger itself... good luck! :-)]

Aparna said...

Blogger does that to us sometimes i think, just to remind us how very important it is to us.
My followers list keeps vanishing. Sometimes it does not show me the latest post by a blogger I follow.
But it reappears...I think Nona made a lot of sense. I think I will do what he says.

Swaram said...

oops! Thatz so weird! Been using google reader .. though it updates @ a snail's pace, no such problems atleast :( Hope its just a temp prob!

N u r rt, the old-fashioned real-world pen-and-paper diary - still the best option na ;) May be I shud secure my blog roll too this way:P

manju said...

This has happened to me a few times. The blogs I am following always appear again when I 'refresh' the page. :)

Anonymous said...

Poor you! I am sure you will get all of them back soon. Blogger issues generally solve by themselves. But Nona's idea is cool.I do that too. Good Luck!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lazyani said...

Must be some temporary glitch or worse a virus attack.

Thanks for sharing the warning as I need to keep a back-up too.

Sumandebray said...

That is quite strange!
Is it really gone or it was just a glitch!
Hope you got your stuff back

Anonymous said...

I am on Wordpress and once I wrote a long post on 'Empty nest', hit publish and POOF! the post disappeared into thin air. Nowhere! not in my dashboard and not on my blog. I had just one para saved in my doc. I was so mad but then sat and typed everything again. But after that always kept backup.

I guess blogger must be trying upgrades. Wait for a day or two or write to the support.

Peter Rozovsky said...

You can create a backup by going to the settings tab, then hitting "export blog" and "download blog." That will let you create a copy. I back up my blog periodically and save the copy on an external hard drive.
=================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

SJ said...

Hey this has happened to me many times. And after I've cursed it a bazzilion times, I add 1 blog which takes forever. The next day the whole list appears by itself magically.

Don't worry, your list is safe. it shall appear tomorrow- abaraca dabaraca choom chooom boom! check now.

Aparna said...

Theres an award waiting for you in my blog.

Nupur said...

Waat ? Can't believe this.. may be there is some technical problem but how on earth could this happen ?

Now I'm thinking how to protect the blogger list that we so neatly maintain !!!

Good Luck to you to arrange it again dear, if at all required.. I'm hoping that your problem is resolved !

Sucharita Sarkar said...

Hi @ everybody,

thanks so much for all your helpful suggestions. i have decided to follow as many of them as i can, because better safe than sorry.

and the reading list has come back, as mysteriously as it had disappeared.

Suko said...

YAY! Now that's a happy ending! : )

Nona said...

This happened to me too when I finished posting yesterday. The reading list disappeared. So, I decided to logout and check in the morning. Now, it is back again.

Blame on google team(blogger). Somebody playing around with our data!

magiceye said...

it is blogpost fooling around. it will come back soon. :)
one of the nasty speedbreakers in blogging!

Lilly said...

Yes its happened twice and I have yet to bother doing it again. I decided I am just going to respond to comments instead.

Sucharita Sarkar said...

I am just so glad it has all come back this time. Next time, i am armed and ready to defend my blog and bloglist.

Deepanjan Ghosh said...

You've been hacked?