Google Nightmare

Have you ever tried to open your blog and been told that it has been deleted?

Have you ever tried to open your email and been told that it has been locked due to suspicious activity?

It's not fun.

Here's something nicer:

Crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) in my garden this week. This dark pink one flowers later than the others.

You can unlock your email account by providing a mobile number which has not been "used up".  Google will send you an unlocking code by SMS. Unfortunately my mobile was "used up" a few years ago when they added the mobile number requirement with no warning and I had a class full of students in the process of creating Gmail accounts and only one mobile in the room - mine. I haven't used Gmail for email classes since that Google nightmare.

Something else nice:

Scaevola flowering in my garden this week. Colour not quite as in real life - the usual purple problem.

You also have the option of having the unlocking code sent to a fixed-line phone. But Google didn't like the way I entered the number. No clues on how they wanted it formatted, just that I was formatting it incorrectly. Did they need the country code? Should I put the "0" in the area code or not? Google wasn't going to tell me.

Anyway, I'm back, and I have no idea what suspicious activity caused Google to lock my email and "delete" my blog. But I'm feeling a little nervous. And I just changed my default search engine to Bing.