Lockdown In Sector 4! WTF?!

And then further: (please note the proper use of 'further,' just for you, Treena!)

Our system has detected abnormal usage of your Gmail account. As a result, we have temporarily disabled access to this account. It will take between one minute and 24 hours for you to regain access, depending on the behavior our system detected.

Uh. Hm. Ok.

Let's start with.. WTF?!

Ok, no.. you're right.. I can't start there. You don't know the whole story. 'WTF' was just my reaction.. and remains my reaction considering said account is STILL locked the F down.

So it started with some files a friend sent me and the ibook at home was having a hard time downloading the zip and kept stopping. I'd found that emailing them to myself after downloading them to my work pc was time consuming, but still much easier for the MAC to handle when I got home and just downloaded from there.

After accomplishing most of what I'd set out to do during the day, I wanted to wrap it up a little quicker and opened two browsers like Yahoo and MSN have never had any issue with before. Apparently, Google has a very big problem with this. They think that someone who is unauthorized (GASP! The horror!) has accessed your account and is doing really really bad things with it.. like.. um.. sending you music or funny jokes.. or possibly spreading cancer! Cuz God knows this 'protection' they claim isn't from spam.

I never had an issue with spam in my whole history of using Yahoo email unless I used my address to sign up for random things and it wasn't a big deal cuz eventually I thought I'd move away from Yahoo cuz Gmail is soooo great, right? Yet, from the first moment I signed up for Gmail, I was getting spam daily.. not many, but I've only had the address for maybe a bit more than a year and it's already doubled in the amount of spam I receive. AND I get them in Japanese and/or Chinese no less!*

Plus - and this really annoys me for some reason - when y'all leave comments on the blog, it groups them together by post title like you aren't even unique or something. So sometimes I may miss a comment cuz I only see the top one and don't think to scroll down when there may actually be more than one there - which insults YOU, my awesomest and most sexy readers, implying that YOU, of all people, can be bulked together like a 25-pair bag of discount socks at Costco!** The shock! The awe! How DARE they!

I tried showing Google exactly what I thought of their punishment by starting a new email at Yahoo, but sadly, 'missdevylish' is not available. Can you believe it?! There might've been severe disappointment and maybe I teared up for a second at that realization cuz really, is 'devylishmiss' good enough? Hardly! Or 'mdevylish?' Or even 'miss_devylish?!' NO! I think NOT! I refuse to be defined by an underline! It's practically indecent!

I thought I might start a protest.. you know.. boycotting Gmail and their hauty lockdown ways knowing that yes, Blogger and Blogspot are owned by Google, but I'm not mad at the Blogger people - except oh.. maybe with all their issues they've had in the last week and, to steal a quote directly from the fabulous Lady Miss Marquise herself, it seems we were having a 'domestic.'

But it's simply with the seemingly undiscriminatory determination from the Gmail folks that I was doing something 'dangerous' and possibly.. oooh CRIMINAL even.. that's irritating. I mean I'm a good and upstanding citizen! I don't forward every joke I receive nor do I gullibly believe those chain letters promising wealth/good luck/'something neat' if I just pass it on to everyone in my address book and their dog. I simply communicate with friends, associates, acquaintances.. the community at large being that I'm an extroverted and happy individual with a need for expressing myself.***

So PLEASE, Gmail people.. I'm BEGGING you.. tell me what beastly atrocity I have committed so that I may plead upon my life for your forgiveness and be allowed, once again, to reach out to my people!

Oh.. um.. hey.. it's back! Nevermind! Um.. pretend we never had this conversation..

Thanks!

* I don't know the difference between Chinese or Japanese type. Yes, I'm completely uneducated. I know. You're shocked.

** You are more like the 100-count bag of tea lights at Ikea. That's WAY better. Good deal, that. You know.. for candles.

*** Yes.. that is what you call it. No, we don't need any other euphamisms from the Peanut Gallery, thank you.