Google has locked hundreds of Blogger websites after a false positive claimed they violated its “Malware and Similar Malicious Content” policy, with some sites actually deleted from the platform.
The issue began on August 4, and it appears to affect many legitimate blogs that do not host malware or have malicious scripts.
As seen by BleepingComputer, hundreds of web admins have reached out to Google on the company’s official forum for help in restoring access to their blogs.
The forum post now has more than 300 “I have the same question” votes and over 100 replies from publishers.
“Today’s huge number of reports regarding blogs flagged/locked for the same reason suggests misclassification by automated systems,” a Blogger Product Expert wrote. “False positives do occur from time to time, but not on this scale.”
If you’re affected, you will see a large red padlock in your Blogger dashboard with a clear warning: “Note: this blog has been locked.”
“This blog was removed for violating Blogger’s Community Guidelines. If you wish to request a review of the blog, click ‘Request Review’ below,” reads the Blogger warning.
Source: Google forum
Google’s automated message also warned publishers that their blogs can be permanently deleted within the next three months if no appeal is submitted.
While a blog is locked, its owner cannot access the dashboard tabs used to manage posts, settings, themes, or other parts of the site.
“The removal happens automatically after updating the homepage or making changes to the blog template,” one publisher reported.
The situation has become even more frustrating for some users, who say that their blogs were restored and then later deleted again.
Not all Blogger users are affected, and some of those who submitted an appeal are already seeing their blogs come back online.
In a statement to BleepingComputer, Google confirmed that it’s aware of a bug that incorrectly flagged some sites as malware, and is working on a fix.
“We are aware of a bug that incorrectly flagged some Blogger-hosted sites as malware for less than a day. We are working on a fix to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” Google said in a statement.
It’s also unclear how many sites are hosted on Blogger, as Google has never disclosed the numbers. However, some third-party trackers suggest that close to 200,000 sites are hosted on the platform.
This is a developing story.
Update 1: Added Google’s statement.
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