SPAM blog

Wondering about the long time without any posts? Google decided that this Blog is a SPAM blog and hence that I shouldn't be allowed to post anymore. Only tonight did I finally get the email from Google:

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that it will no longer appear as potential spam.

 I'm actually quite annoyed by that since I really haven't done anything questionable. I'm at a loss to explain what caused them to suddenly think that this is a SPAM blog ...  maybe that I posted a pretty long link list - but that would be a pretty shallow criteria. Maybe that I configured www.valentinzacharias/blog to forward to this site? That I added the link widget to the sidebar? Guess you can just accept a high false positive rate when the cost of false positives is not borne by you.  But yes - this is a free service so I shouldn't expect too much.

In the end this is just another reminder not give Google to much control over your data / your life (or the Internet as a whole, for that matter). I for one will be moving my blog over to my own server.  For the time being I'll still use Blogger - but with FTP publishing. At least I'll have the final say and cannot be locked out anymore.