Recovering Your Account Information - Improved

Blogger has long promised us that our blogs will be ours, forever, and that we are free to publish our blogs in privacy, if we so desire. Based on those promises, not all Blogger blog owners have made the right decisions, in retaining access to their Blogger / Google accounts.

Many problem reports. from frustrated owners, are seen, daily, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

My email address changed some time ago, and now, I can't login to Blogger and update my blog!

Last year, Blogger made several changes to their account recovery policies and procedures, which made this subject, for many blog owners, a critical and painful issue. Now, Google is making an organised effort to reduce the pain, by improving their account recovery tool.

There are two tools which you may wish to try, when you cannot login directly, to your Blogger account.

• Blogger: Forgot your username or password?
• Google: Having trouble signing in?

Google re designed account recovery, in 2012.

Recognising the frustration caused by some recent changes to the Blogger / Google login, and to various account recovery procedures, Google recently improved the design of their account recovery tool. Formerly labeled

• Account Recovery: Forgot your password?

We now have

• Google: Having trouble signing in?

The newly designed wizard covers both Google account un deletion, and account recovery, transparently. It won't provide recovery of all Google services lost when the account was deleted, however.

The wizard has three initial selections.

• I forgot my password
• I forgot my username
• I'm having other problems signing in

I forgot my password

Immediately when selecting "I forgot my password", you'll be asked to provide the username of your Google account, labeled "Email address". As noted, this may be either a GMail address - or any non GMail email address.

To reset your password, enter the username you use to sign in to Google. This can be your Gmail address, or it may be another email address you associated with your account.

Having hit "Continue", expect to see a CAPTCHA. Successfully solving the CAPTCHA, you'll be presented with three options. Each of these options requires proper advance registration, by the blog owner.

Choose how to get back into your account.

• Get a verification code on my phone.
• Answer my security question
• Get a password reset link at my recovery email

I forgot my username

Immediately when selecting "I forgot my username", you'll need to provide the account recovery email.

Please enter the recovery email address you provided when creating your account.

Having entered the right email address, you'll next (surprise!) get to solve a CAPTCHA, and then receive the welcome news.

An email has been sent to xxxxxxx@yyyyy.zzz containing all Gmail usernames associated with that address.

Please make sure xxxxxxx@yyy.zzz is your recovery email address. If it is not, you will not receive an email containing your username.

Here, once again, we see the advantage of not remaining completely anonymous.

I'm having other problems signing in
Immediately when selecting "I'm having other problems signing in", you'll be asked for your Email address.

Enter the username you use to sign in to Google. This can be your Gmail address, or it may be another email address you associated with your account.

Having provided an email address (big surprise!!), you'll be asked to solve a CAPTCHA. Finally, you'll be provided the Google Accounts: Problems signing in to your account article, with additional selections.

Please select your issue:

• I forgot my password
• I think someone else is using my account
• I forgot my username
• I know my username and password, but I can't sign in
• I can't reset my password via SMS
• I use a Google Apps account
• I'm having trouble with 2-step verification

Here we see a wide assortment of options, all carefully provided to allow genuine Blogger blog owners to recover access to their Blogger / Google accounts, while preventing malicious hijacking. This should complement the separate Blogger blog access recovery wizard. You'd be wise to try at least some of these options, before asking for assistance, in a public forum.

The automated tools are necessary, to protect our accounts and blogs from people seeking to misuse the recovery process, and steal control of our accounts and our blogs.

Recovery works best with "lost access" accounts - "stolen" accounts will differ.

Now, you'll want to note that these wizards help you recover control of a Blogger / Google account that you simply have lost access. If your GMail / Google account has been successfully hijacked, you're going to need different corrective measures, for recovery and future protection.

Please note that both tools provided by Blogger / Google will work more reliably, with a blog that was not transferred improperly, from one Blogger account to another. And plan the recovery process, don't be caught unaware of the new recovery verification procedures.