A month ago, it appeared that Blogetery.com, a blog platform that claims more than 70,000 publications, would never be heard from again.
The service was shut down last month by its Web host after FBI agents alleged the terrorist group al-Qaeda was using the platform to distribute recruiting materials, bomb-making tips, and the names of people targeted by the organization for assassination.
This wasn't enough to spook Alexander Yusupov, Blogetery's operator into giving up on the service. Against all the odds, the Toronto resident brought Blogetery back.
Burst.net, the company that provided Web access for Blogetery, initially said Blogetery was being booted at the request of law enforcement officials who were investigating the terrorist materials allegedly found on Blogetery (CNET reported that the FBI was the investigating agency). Burst.net later said that Blogetery was closed down because of multiple Terms of Service violations.
Typically, Burst.net doesn't return data to customers that have been shut down for TOS violations, but made an exception in Blogetery's case.
Yusupov told CNET on Sunday that Burst.net returned to him what appears to be all his customers' data. He added that he asked Burst.net to clarify whether the data linked to al-Qaeda was removed, but he said representatives there declined to provide him with this information.
Since then, Yusupov, who was never accused by authorities of any wrongdoing, found a new Web host and relaunched Blogetery on August 10. He said the service is faster, has less spam blogs or splogs and, this time around all the data is backed up.
"Yeah, that's what I learned from all this," Yusupov said. "You have to make backups daily...hourly."