I once had a Tumblr blog.
On that blog, I posted my current jams. I re-blogged some glitch art or funny stuff or leftist propoganda I favored. Occasionally I wrote something. Mostly, though, I posted quotes on that blog from articles that I really liked. Quotes that made me want to be a better writer.
Now it’s all gone. All the content is gone when you look at the page. The last Wayback Machine snapshot is from March 2015, and it is one page of archives.
My email address cannot be used to log in or reset the password. Tumblr support was as nice as they could be, but they cannot be any help. I never received an email stating that somebody had changed my Tumblr email address. I never saw a notice that all of my posts were bulk-deleted. I just went to post something one day, noticed my password didn’t work, and then noticed, much later, that everything was gone.
For those who might offer to fix, or at least solve the mystery, I am sorry to say that:
- I used a randomly generated password from LastPass for this account, at least 8 characters long, numbers and symbols and everything.
- I do not appear to have been part of Tumblr’s recent sweep-out of inactive accounts. I did not get an email stating that I was inactive and should do something about that.
- I did not back up my Tumblr account. Tumblr does not make it easy to do so, last I checked. But I could have done it, probably.
If it was a Tumblr database error, or some other benign mistake, I suppose I’ve learned a lesson about impermanence.
If my account was compromised (“hacked”): why? If it was a spambot, why are they even worse with procrastination than I am?
If you value something, don’t leave it on somebody else’s servers without backups.
I’m going to back up this site right now.