Friday, September 17, 2010

My Scary Day on the Internet











Yikes. Talk about a scary day on the internet. I woke up to be greeted by this warning every time I visited my site, or tried to publish anything.

The mighty Blogger was blocking my teeny blog, because it apparently contained: 

"elements from rpc.blogrolling.com which appears to host malware."

So now I'm in a panic thinking blogrolling.com what's dat? Malware? Doesn't that come from porn sites? Why me? Is it the gun lobby? Or the sinister Con operative Snuffleupagus? 

So I spent about six hours this evening scanning every corner of my computer, or slogging wearily through a jungle of HTML code looking for signs of alien life. I could see that people all over the blogosphere were having the same problem.

But nothing came up. No viruses, no malware, no nothing. So now I'm thinking either this bug is the latest model from Russia. Or Kory Teneycke is smarter than I thought. Because as we know, like the Russians, he's capable of  ANYTHING. Or was.  

Then tonight just when I was about to give up,  I decided to take a chance and visit my Chernobyl site, and there at the bottom of the page, staring me in the face, under the blogroll of the Blogging Alliance of Non-Partisan Canadians, was a little widget...... "POWERED BY BLOGROLLING."

I removed it with one click of the mouse, and the big red scary warning disappeared. Instantly.

But by then it was too late.

About an hour before, in a state of total distraction at the thought that Kornhole might be smarter than me, I had tossed my baggy army pants into the washer.... with my cell phone in them.

So are you feeling sorry for me yet?   I didn't think so. 

Oh boy. Sometimes I hate the internet.





















On the other hand it's days like these that remind me, how much I depend on it, and how much I enjoy blogging.

So what the heck. Who needs a non waterproof cell phone eh? I got my little blog back.

It's almost the weekend. 

So it must be a wonderful life...



Hey!! Is that my cell phone at the bottom of the pool?

Or Kory Teneycke?

Have a great weekend everybody !!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Simon,

If you still have Sebastien and your dog to console you, then all is not lost.

What you lose pales in comparison to what you still have left--
companions, friends, pets, health, community and intellect.

A waterlogged phone? Small potatoes to losing everything else.

This could be considered as a proxy hug, so cherish it if it's worth it.

Mark from Slap said...

Glad you got things back up and running so soon, Simon!

Although, just to be pedantic, it wasn't Blogger that blocked your site; it was your web browser. (Looks like Chrome from the screenshot in your post.) Almost all browsers nowadays have phishing filters installed.

At any rate, that's some good sleuthing tracking it down to the blog roller thing! I wonder if the Non-Partisan Blogger people know about it?

Simon said...

hi Torontonian...thanks for the sweet message. And of course you're right.
Although, don't mention Sebastien eh?
Even as I struggled to repair my shattered world he kept saying this wouldn't have happened if you didn't spend so much time on the internet. So I still haven't forgiven him.

But thanks for the hug... :)

Simon said...

hi Mark...yes you're right about Chrome. Mind you I didn't figure that out until the warning disappeared instantly. Duh. In my defence I was absolutely exhausted from work, and after reading what Blogger had to say
about malware, I was convinced that I would have to prove to them that my site wasn't contaminated. And that can take DAYS !!! Oh well. At least my computer is squeaky clean, and I got to prove to my dumb friends that even a genius can be an idiot... :)

1389 said...

Here's what happened, and what to do about it:

What Happened to BlogRolling?