I was BLOCKED from USING BLOGGER!

 

Image from AVRS screenshot¹.

I've been using Blogger consistently for almost a year now and in that span I make incremental updates to the internal processes one of which is to increase the visibility to more readers. These include standard SEO changes to posts along with continuously making sure that readers who visit the blog know that each blog post can potentially receive patches like a software update. For example, in my Stryker post², I tracked a story about a security issue that was eventually resolved where that blog post contains new updates about that story.

Why am I bringing this up? Well... One of the changes I made for each of the posts, as of writing this (and still not sure whether my account will be reissued as the time of this writing), or at least attempted to change was the image tags (img) with the attribute loading="lazy" to help speed up image loading when someone reads a post. Basically, I run a search for the image tag (img) and manually copy and paste the loading="lazy" attribute to each image for each blog post.

I believe that adding the image attribute caused Google's Blogger to incorrectly flag my account for violating their Malware and Malicious Content policy. Mind you I was updating each blog post image(s) MANUALLY, however, I was doing it quickly. Before that, I started the process of adding Google AdSense to the blog. As a result, I believe the combination of what I did were the reasons why my account was blocked, at least temporarily.

I have 90 days to appeal, that of which I immediately did, and now I am awaiting the result of that with a wait time of about ten days. This will not prevent me from writing but it does add some friction to the routine. In the same context for the blog, I am writing about my experience. Something like this is annoying when they happen in the writing journey. Hopefully, the issue will be resolved sooner rather than later. I am eager to continuously contribute to the community and regardless of the outcome, I will find a way to make sure people are able to read the content.

Here is the automated email notification I received when Google's Blogger blocked my account³:

Hello,

As you may know, our Community Guidelines (https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we allow-- and don't allow-- on Blogger. Your blog titled "A VR STORY" was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have made the URL https://blog.avrstory.net unavailable to blog readers.

Why was your blog removed?

Your content has violated ourMalware and Similar Malicious Content policy. Please visit our Community Guidelines page linked in this email to learn more.

If you have any further questions about malware and your blog, you may follow-up by posting to our Help Forum.

If you believe we made an error, you can request an appeal https://blog.avrstory.net which must be done within the next 90 days. Appeals are typically resolved within 10 business days, though some more complex cases may take longer. If your appeal was approved you will hear a response. You may have the option to pursue your claims in court. If you have legal questions or wish to examine legal options that may be available to you, you may want to consult with your own legal counsel.

For further information, please see the following resources:
Terms of Service: https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/
Content Policy: https://www.blogger.com/go/contentpolicy

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
  

The great news is that Blogger blocked the account for only 24 hours; so a mild inconvenience at best. However, this sets a precedence on being more vigilant about being more aware of the mechanisms that determine of what is considered appropriate, generally speaking. This is not a criticism on what type of content can be posted because to some extent, we should practice some level of self-constraint or at a bare minimum articulate some concepts that could be controversial. What I post about is generally benign where I do my best to warn readers of content that could pose some sort of risk. Blogger does provide rules of what is deemed appropriate. Some of the automatic mechanisms can also get those wrong because it would be vastly inefficient if people were monitoring all of the blogs individually considering the number of users on the platform⁴.

This incident does not change my perspective on Blogger as a platform considering that I took measures beforehand to anticipate situations such as these. For example, all my blog posts start offline before they are copied onto the Blogger platform⁵ and I download (and archive) the source code in different intervals throughout the year, in the same way I use version control to continuously revise content over a period of time. A lot of this is detailed in my Blogger review post if you are curious to read⁵.

My only main criticism of Blogger blocking my account temporarily has to do with not knowing exactly what triggered it in the first place. If you've gotten in this far in the post, you know that I made several assumptions about the reasons but those are inconclusive. I made those assumptions based on back tracing events that lead up to when the account was blocked. The account becomes completely inaccessible when blocked so I couldn't investigate the root cause or attempt to rectify the issue during that time. The only way to potentially recover the account is by filing an appeal that is available for 89 days until the account is fully shutdown. The appeals process is easy, simply by clicking a button that appears on the account page¹. Even though the appeals process is easy, it would be nice if Blogger pointed out all the suspect issues (😉, 😉).

What sort of actions have I taken since being blocked and reinstated?

Considering I am in the next phase of goals for the blog, it's really business as usual. I've been in the process of of updating each blog post and as of this writing, starting from the very first blog post, I am up to April 2026 with the preliminary patches as I work my way to the present⁶. Doing the patches does add a little more time to when I do write, but the process is still very much the same workflow since it is all in the same context of the blog, between writing content and doing development for it, and also serving as content such as this blog post.

The blog posts also serves as a timeline of events, not only for A VR STORY but also about the topics I cover. Over time, each post can potentially serve as a case study for certain topics and may even reveal patterns or anomalies that individual posts at the time of it's publishing couldn't reveal because there wasn't sufficient historical data to provide better context.

Regardless, of what sort of ideas I surmise about the blog, I am pleased that my account was only blocked for a day...

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog! 😄

VERSIONS

2026v.0.1.0: init⁷

REFERENCES

1. AVRS screenshot Blocked account! ↩ ↩²

2. Read "SECURITY:OUTAGE:STRYKER, Microsoft Intune Disruption (11 March 2026)" ↩

3. I substituted the url with the public blog url https://blog.avrstory.net. ↩

4. I originally drafted the blog the day Blogger blocked it. So the remainder of this post is a post mortem. ↩

5. Read my review of blogger: https://blog.avrstory.net/2026/07/app-explore-review-googles-blogger.html. If you are worried being locked out from the content you created, consider having an offline strategy early in your writing journey as a preventive measure. ↩ ↩²

6. The published schedule remains the same. Only a handful of posts receive a published schedule update. ↩

7. blog.avrstory.net's development release page. ↩