A lovely christmas present

My blog, AnonymousLefty, has been hacked, deleted, and the URL stolen. Likewise BoltWatch.

This is what happened.

For the past month or so there has been a creepy stalking troll following me around the internet, trying to take my identity. It's been posting obnoxious comments on other people's blogs using my pseudonym and the blackadder image.

The loathsome creature even started a blogspot blog at anonymouslefty2.blogspot.com on which s/he reposted my posts, slightly altered.

And this morning, somehow, the bastard hacked into my blogspot account and deleted all my blogs.

They then went and registered them under their alternate "MrLefty" identity. God knows what the thief is going to do with my sites, but it can't be good.

So - BoltWatch is now under the thief's control. So is AnonymousLefty. Efforts are being made to regain the blogs, but in the meantime, this is the notice:

ANYTHING ON ANONYMOUSLEFTY AND BOLTWATCH IS BY THE THIEF, NOT ME.

I presume that anyone who's got a blog of their own and has spent time building the thing, writing posts, conversing with readers will have some idea of how unbelievably infuriating and upsetting this incident is.

Whoever this person is, he or she is scum. I hope blogspot takes this blatant violation of their terms of service seriously. But even if it doesn't, surely this is the sort of thing at which all bloggers, and indeed anyone who reads blogs, can only be outraged. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

In the meantime, I ask you to consider:

• Letting your readers know what's happened to me (if nothing else, it's a good warning for everyone with a blog to make sure their password is REALLY uncrackable, and that they've got a back up of their posts); and/or
  
• perhaps editorialising/letting blogspot know what you think about a system that enables a hacker to delete blogs without it going through the user's email first, and that lets a deleted blog URL be immediately re-registered by someone else. How secure does this make you feel?

Thanks everyone. And have a happy christmas.

UPDATE:
Oh, and in case anyone was wondering if this really is me, MrLefty, there's a fairly easy way to prove it:


People stealing other people's blogs makes me angry. Particularly if it involves DELETING PHOTOGRAPHS OF ME.

The fake, thieving "MrLefty" temporarily enjoying my old AnonymousLefty URL will almost certainly not be inflicting new photographs of Polly on his/MY unsuspecting readers.

He's still a bad man, though.

UPDATE #2:
Whilst suggesting that I'm faking this whole thing for publicity (so like me), a commenter at Blair's has pointed out something interesting: I do seem to be prone to this sort of thing, at this time of year. Let's see:

• Christmas 2004: Melbourne Lefty blog exposed to my then employer, deleted, and then hijacked by some nefarious fellow with a business selling chemical cures for impotence. (Whereas under me the blog had just caused impotence.)
  
• Christmas 2005: Having pieced together a reasonable guess at my identity from the revelation that my name was Jeremy and that I'd just gone to the Victorian Bar, certain (then ironically anonymous themselves) bloggers launch a campaign to publicise my full name far and wide, whether I want to use a pseudonym or not.
  
• Christmas 2006: Having spent the previous month pretending to be me around the internet, my new stalker deletes my blogs and steals the URLs.

Gosh! I can't wait to discover what they've got in store for me for Christmas 2007!

By the way, I'm more than happy for friendly bloggers to start referring to me with my real name, Jeremy Sear. At present it's only those who detest me who use it, whilst decent friendly types respect my use of a pseudonym. Unfortunately this has the effect that if you google "Jeremy Sear", all that comes up are attacks on me, rather than the more balanced list of references which you'd get if you googled "AnonymousLefty" or "MrLefty". So, please feel free to use my real name.

They are, anyway.

UPDATE #3:
So many theories about what's going on! Over at Blair's they're just flying. Daniel San thinks I've done it to draw attention to myself. Grimmy thinks I've earned it by being a filthy lefty. Charlie Woodscolt thinks I'm trying to bury my tracks for a possible tilt at public office (which makes continuing the blog over here and using my real name a bit daft, but no-one ever said we lefties were sensible).

With such great minds on the case, I'm sure we'll figure out soon what's really going on.

UPDATE #4:
A blogger whose name coincidentally rhymes with "slanderyou" has asked me not to suspect that the hacker is someone affiliated with him. Because this blogger is such a paragon of ethical behaviour, and because I found his clever photoshopping effort of last week inspiring (he photoshopped my head onto the patrons at a brothel! What a genius!), and because frankly the idea of hearing from him again makes the bile churn in my stomach, I've removed the remark. Hopefully he'll be able to enjoy his Christmas now.

UPDATE #5:
Both AnonymousLefty and BoltWatch are back, at new URLs (AnonymousLefty (In Exile) and BoltWatch (In Exile)), while I wait for Blogspot to get around to restoring the original sites. Please update your links.