Blogger legacy accounts.

April 27, 2012 3:08 AM

I've had an email from Blogger about legacy accounts and I'm not sure what to do.

I just received this email, which is a surprise since I've well migrated over to Google's accounts. I've visited the page

http://www.blogger.com/legacy-claim.do

and attempted to log in with all the username/password I can think of and none of them work. I've also asked for a password reminder on the arcane email address it was sent to and that hasn't worked either.

Is this anything to worry about? Has anyone else had this?


Hello,

You are receiving this message because your email address is associated with an unmigrated legacy Blogger account. As we announced in April of last year, legacy accounts will no longer be accessible after May 30th, 2012 unless they are updated to the Google Account system. Any blog content associated with this account will also be unmodifiable after that date.

To transfer your blog to the Google Account system you need to visit the Legacy Migration page at [link omitted] right now to make sure that your account and associated blogs are claimed. If you’ve forgotten the Blogger password that is associated with this email address, you can use our Account Recovery page at [link omited] to request password information to be sent via email.

For more information, please see our initial announcement we posted to our blog at [link omitted]. If you have questions, please visit our Help Forum at [link omitted] and create a message with [Legacy Account] in the subject line.

Regards,

The Blogger Team
Google
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

posted by feelinglistless to Computers & Internet (24 answers total)

I've just had this too (same wording). I didn't respond.

FWIW I think I created some experimental blogger accounts a long time ago, but I'm okay about letting them go.
posted by carter at 3:17 AM on April 27, 2012

Password recovery worked for me. It was an old test account so I let it go. Entering the arcane email address didn't in the Account Recovery/Forgot Password box didn't do anything for you? Maybe the email is delayed.
posted by backwards guitar at 3:35 AM on April 27, 2012

I had it too. Entering the user name did not work. The message came to an old e-mail address, not the one I am currently using.

I suspected a phishing attempt, but the page was on blogger.com and that domain is registered to Google.
posted by yclipse at 4:33 AM on April 27, 2012

If you click the link in the email to their original announcement, you'll see:

(This message only applies to a tiny fraction of users who haven’t logged in to Blogger since 2007. If you’ve logged in to Blogger at least one time since 2007, you won’t be affected and can disregard this message.)

I don't know why they didn't repeat this in the email.
posted by John Cohen at 6:06 AM on April 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

There's also an option for those of us who have forgotten the username - click on the 'forgot username' option and it will ask you for an email address and a 'recaptcha' thingy. I did that, it sent me the email addresses associated with the account etc. (I still have no idea which blogger account they're talking about though.)
posted by HopStopDon'tShop at 6:28 AM on April 27, 2012

I got the same email. I never had a blogger account. It's definitely a scam.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:30 AM on April 27, 2012

I am a habitual blog-maker and abandoner, so when I got this email I followed up on it. It turns out that the account they were notifying me about was a blogspot blog that I created back in, like, 2006. I didn't know that blogspot and Blogger were connected. Once I saw Ye Olde Blogspot Blog, I stopped investigating because it is just fine if it disappears into the ether.
posted by Elly Vortex at 6:50 AM on April 27, 2012

I also got one, and realized that the e-mail associated with it was one I made when I was following a lot of art blogs - I'm guessing, did Blogger (or certain bloggers) require a log-in to leave comments? I figure I must have made one for commenting purposes and never made a blog, and it is that account.
posted by cobaltnine at 7:00 AM on April 27, 2012

I can't find an outcast abandoned blog - all my abandoned blogs are linked on the main Blogger page. I figure I got the email for some arcane reason as suggested by cobaltnine, or in error.
posted by StephenF at 8:17 AM on April 27, 2012

Best answer: I'm an engineer on the blogger team and the email is legitimate.

A little bit of back story is needed here. Blogger (ie blogger.com, blogspot.com) ended up at Google via acquisition from Pyra Labs around 2003. It originally had its own account system (which is what the email quoted above refers to as an "unmigrated legacy Blogger account").

Around 2006, Blogger was modified to use Google accounts. When users logged in using their legacy username and password they were prompted to either log in or create a Google account. Once complete the profile plus all blogs owned by their legacy account were associated with their Google account. We're now in the process of turning off support for logging in via the legacy accounts (which have been deprecated for over 5 years) and the emails being sent are a final reminder.

If you received this email then at some stage in the last 12 years, you had created a legacy Blogger account with the provided email address. You may have created the account just to comment, or there may also be blogs associated with it. Given the length of time these accounts have been supported you may also have entirely forgotten about it.

Our main concern with these emails is ensuring that our users have every possible chance to reclaim their data. I'm happy to answer any additional questions in this thread.
posted by andrewo at 8:51 AM on April 27, 2012 [8 favorites]

Andrew, thanks for joining the thread!

I'm having trouble with this. When I try to login using the email account that the message was sent to (a gmail account), it says the account is not found. Why?
posted by carolinaherrera at 8:55 AM on April 27, 2012

Response by poster: Hi Andrew, thanks for the reply. At least I know it's legit.

I've had a check back through my emails, and back when Blogger was still part of Pyra in 2002, I paid $12 for an ad-free account and the email connected to that payment is the one that this email as sent to. Could it be because of that?

My currently Google account isn't connected to that in any way and my blogger accounts I created back then are now connected to the different email address I use for my Google account. I suppose that means this email's nothing to worry about?
posted by feelinglistless at 9:16 AM on April 27, 2012

Best answer: carolinaherrera: if you can mail me account details (just the email is fine) I'll follow up.

feelinglistless: that's almost certainly what happened. If you've been logging into and using Blogger then you have nothing to worry about.
posted by andrewo at 9:36 AM on April 27, 2012

Got the email too. My problem is that the Legacy Migration link takes me to a page in Chinese. I suppose that's because I am in Hong Kong. But there is no way to change the page into English. Despite the language hurdle, I have tried different email addresses and passwords to no avail.

Oh, while we are at it, me and a lot of other people are now no longer able to "schedule" posts. It's been going on for seven days. There are many posts in "Something is Broken" about this but as yet no solution. Be good to get that fixed ASAP. Thanks.
posted by Mister Bijou at 10:03 AM on April 27, 2012

Yeah, the process initiated through the email is totally broken (and disappointingly, solidifying the direction Google has been falling in general). I'm not sure what "legacy" blogs I'm supposed to be finding, but somehow I logged into my normal (G+/Gmail) account and the one blog I can think of did show up in the dashboard. I have no idea if there's anything else, but if I can't remember then Google's failure is no-harm-no-foul.
posted by rhizome at 10:45 AM on April 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Agreed with rhizome. The link in the email did not work at all for me -- it kept taking me to a blogger log-in page, which would not let me log in with the username and password associated with my old blogs. This was deeply frustrating (and I tried the "recover password" function a few times; it didn't work either). Finally, I just went to "blogger.com" and logged in with the email account associated with my old blogs, and they all showed up in the dashboard. I'm hoping there wasn't some other blogger account I set up at some time that hasn't been migrated, but if I can't remember it, it can't have been that important to me, right?
posted by devinemissk at 12:29 PM on April 27, 2012

I got the email too, and I immediately marked it as spam and ditched it. Interesting to hear that this is legitimate, as I've never had a Blogger account... because I don't blog, and I've never even wanted to blog.
posted by heyho at 12:54 PM on April 27, 2012

I got this message today, too. Had the same experience of trying to log in on the webpage. Finally went ahead and changed my Google password just so I would be right. Now I can access the old blog I had created back in 2006 but I can't post to it. Unfortunately, my new blog (that has been functionally with Google until today) no longer works. I can see the page, but I can't see my followers, can't get to the Dashboard or create a new post. Anything I can do to get my current blog working again? Thanks.

P.S. This is my first post here so I hope it posts as a comment / not an answer.
posted by wildsparrow at 2:33 PM on April 27, 2012

I got this email and following the instructions worked without a hitch. I guess I was lucky because I remembered what my old UID & pw were (or at least, I remembered what I presumed they had to be). The blogs under the old legacy account turned out to be some old junk that I don't really care about, but was glad to have the opportunity to keep ahold of them.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:46 PM on April 27, 2012

I got this and was able to resurrect what I thought was a long-lost blog. The only issue is when I try editing the template it borks the formatting, but I suspect that's user error.
posted by Space Kitty at 12:33 PM on April 28, 2012

I received this email and did everything I could to get into the account(s) and I never could do so, using what I thought to be the password I used upon creating but also using my current gmail account login information, which I was pretty sure I'd associated these blogs with.

And it gets really weird -- I am using Firefox, I am logged into Gmail GVoice Reader and also logged into associated youtube account but it will not let me into the Blogger account. Okay, maybe the thing is nuts, so I logged out of everything -- still nothing. I cannot get into Blogger, not using Firefox.

So I opened up Opera, went to Blogger, logged in there, it sent a text to my cell to verify that it's me and then it allowed me in to both blogs associated with my Google username. WTF?

So today I did ran through the same steps and found once again that the only way I can access these account is through Opera. (I haven't tried MS browser, I hate even to open that thing up and never do so except on the very few sites which request it IE windoze updates etc.) I cannot even *see* the blogs through Firefox, I plug the name into the address line and it goes through this huge "Redirecting" and "Connecting" song and dance, again and again spinning through this cycle, hanging up there basically.
http://dancestoblue.blogspot.com

So what's up with that? Anyone else have this problem, anyone know what the story is? I"m not currently using either of those blogs but now I cannot even look at them much less edit them unless I use Opera -- wtf?
posted by dancestoblue at 3:01 PM on April 28, 2012

I just opened the e-mail thanks to this thread, and resurrected a blog that I thought I had lost forever! This is awesome!
posted by ukdanae at 3:57 AM on April 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

Saw this thread and went to Blogger. It's scary how two of my blogs came up immediately, even though I haven't logged in yet!
posted by Alnedra at 6:12 AM on April 30, 2012

Hi, I'm a little stumped on a similar issue. I'm an active blogger, but rec'd the Google email about migrating my legacy account. However, as I said, I'm an active user, and I don't fall into the camp of having not logged in since 2007. Just to be sure my blog isn't deleted as of May 30th though, I tried to log in via the link Google sent. I couldn't. But still, I could log into my actual blog in a separate browser window. Huh? Can anyone help? The follow-up emails I received from Google (when I double-checked password and username) said that my email account is associated with my blog, the blog I always use. Huh? Still confused! Can anyone help? I'd do a very happy dance if someone could.
posted by PatriciaSexton at 6:25 PM on May 1, 2012 [1 favorite]