The Lengths Some People Go To

There might be strange things going on and not all of them are easily explained...

I don't know if my security has been compromised, but I'm writing this in the most peculiar way (for me) and I have no guarantee it will even appear.

I'd like to say that Blogger is buggered, but it doesn't appear that other people are experiencing the problems I am. Let me start at the beginning.

I discovered just recently that I can't sign out of my account on Blogger. It's permanently signed in on this computer; so when I tried to create a blog for Roger and I to wibble on about our sports interests, it wouldn't allow me to do it. It essentially would not let me log out and I struggled to get my head around it, so I created a WordPress blog for us both. But the nagging feeling wouldn't go away, so I decided to try and see if it was a peculiarity of me using Google Chrome as a web browser. So I opened Firefox, went to Blogger, created a new account, did a test post, was satisfied that it was a fault with Chrome and then ... couldn't sign out.

Anyhow, I had something to talk about, so opened up Chrome this morning and went to Blogger and was asked for my details; something I haven't had to do for a long time. I did this, figuring that whatever problem it was had been sorted. Except, it wouldn't sign me in. It accepted my details, but wouldn't let me leave the sign in page. I scratched my head, perplexed. I searched around Blogger's site for some info; emailed Roger and tried to access my fake account on Firefox. There was nothing helpful from Blogger. Roger was in and using it and my fake account would let me post something. Very weird.

So I went through the signing in bollocks; got confirmation, changed my password, cleared my cache and did all the other suggestions that I usually sneer at as bollocks. Still no access to my blogs. Hm... This was getting annoying. Then I noticed I had two emails from Blogger regarding access; one of them said it had found another blog linked to me and would I like to link it directly?

Huh? Another blog? Not likely. But I thought it might be a clue to what is happening. So I clicked on the link and it tells me that the blog - Secrets & Lies - was now linked to my blog list. Of course, because I still could not get into my own account I couldn't look at it. So, I used my fake account to access Phill Hall blogs and there it was, Secrets & Lies. It had been created on May 25 and was ornate, had my profile prominently displayed and the description: The real story behind Phil Hall's life in comics.

I certainly didn't do it. But, it's got to have come from somewhere. The obvious giveaway is that my first name has been spelled the old way and that it was unlinked, but somehow associated with me in some way. Like I said, weird.

So, if you are reading this, how have I managed to get into my blogs? Well, I'm using Internet Explorer, which allowed me to sign in, which suggests the problem could be linked to my browsers - Chrome and Firefox; seems unlikely, but why else? Of course, I haven't tried to post anything or sign out of this account yet, but at the moment I have access to what is rightfully mine, which dispenses with the idea that I might have been hacked a lot worse than is apparent. because, I must have had some attack, otherwise this phantom blog wouldn't have appeared.

Anyhow; I can't be arsed farting about like this to maintain Blogger blogs if they're going to screw me about; so I've created two new blogs on WordPress, which will, unless things get back to normal, take over the publishing of this blog and will continue to serialised My Monthly Curse on a separate blog. I'll give the URLs and stuff when I've got them looking how I want them and am sure that I'm doing everything right, because WordPress makes Blogger look like a system designed for idiots... oh...

The wrinkles don't stop though. The reason I don't use IE is because of it's crapness. I wrote a blog entry this morning, in Word, because of the Blogger difficulties. When I came to cut and paste it into an empty template; IE wouldn't let me paste anything. The paste tool appears to be disabled. It won't even let me cut and paste text from this blog entry! At least not by using right click. IE is monstrously bad, complicated and I really hope I don't have to use it again for a long time...