Scoble's Google Profile Disappears (and quickly re-appears)

UPDATE: Friday April 23 2010 at 14:40

Robert commented here that Google determined his account may have been under attack, so it was deactivated or “locked down” until Robert verified his true identity. This inspires some confidence in Google’s security measures, and is a reminder how important it is to set up your “password recovery” options carefully.

In your Google Account dashboard, under “Personal Settings / Security” you can change password recovery options.

UPDATE:

Clarification: The first screen capture shows Chrome in “incognito” mode. This eliminates the possibility that Scoble’s profile was invisible to me because I had been “blocked.” 

This morning I was going about my business as usual, commenting on the recent Facebook news, when a curious thing happened. I attempted to give a courtesy @ shout-out to Robert Scoble in a thread where a friend recommended his post on the Facebook news, and to my surprise Robert’s Google profile was gone.

The black rectangle over the Anonymous Avatar means the profile has been removed; this is supposed to happen only as a result of a TOS violation such as spamming, phishing, or other serious offense. The profile was restored quickly, but the question remains: what happened?

I’m posting these screen captures as documentation; it was very odd indeed. Note the missing avatars and the missing “feed.” Please speak up if you know what happened, or if you don’t! :)

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Comments

[Sunil]

That is called as google magic

[Robert Scoble]

Google's security APIs sensed something was attacking my account and shut down until I confirmed I was still in control of my account. Then it turned everything back on.