My blog posts has been copied before by another blogger. She took several blog posts and passed it off as her own. But that was soon resolved.
And then recently there are robots or whatever it is you call them that goes around stealing posts from several bloggers to pass of as their own. These blogs would steal content as soon as you hit publish. They take posts from different bloggers on the same subject matter. Lets say its a Parenting blog. They would steal the content of several Parenting blogs and pass it off as their own. Many of my posts had been stolen that way before.
But now, I’ve just discovered that my ENTIRE BLOG is being copied! Everything. Every post. Every image. Here, take a look at my Parenting blog. Its called Parenting Times. And then take a look at the fake one. Its called Parenting Details. Its a replica of my blog content with all my pictures too including pictures of my children’s craft. I’m so upset but I don’t know what to do. I hate it that someone is trying to pass all my personal moments with my kids as theirs!
I forgot to mention. The forger has put 3 categories into the blog. My whole blog has been copied and being passed of as the Parenting Tip category. Another category is blank and the 3rd category is a copy of various Parenting news from online newspapers on the net.
Can somebody help me please???? What should I do? Can I report to Google or something? I don’t want my blog to be penalised for duplicate content. How should I do that? Anybody has any experience with this?
LOL, want me go and bitch slap them a bit? The other day, Samm’s post was stolen and she sent me as well. And it was taken down after that. I am for hire. Payable in advance, USD, negotiable.
Errrrr.. now no more paid post to write, I can’t affort to pay USD liao. Can do for free ah? Lol!
They copied through RSS or?
I think the feller copy using my Google sitemaps xml file or something. I saw the whole file on the site.
Wuah, they obviously like your site a lot. No ads, new site. No comment, no contact. Sei forr lorr. The only thing you can try is to contact the webhost :
Registrar: SCHLUND+PARTNER AG
Whois Server: whois.schlund.info
Referral URL: http://registrar.schlund.info
Expiration Date: 2008-09-18
Creation Date: 2007-09-18
Last Update Date: 2007-09-18
but I doubt you can get much from there. So, start to write a nasty warning as post and hope they pick it up. The other day, Samm change one of her photo to a warning and eventually the site took down her post.
Maybe baru open business notchet add ads or comments yet. Lol!
walau… these people really tak malu lar…
Yeah. Betul betul tak malu…..
Hi, you can go see what i did to my post, lol. That fler took it down in less than 24hrs. You may try. But i dare say reporting to the watwat webhost also not much use wann. But try lah.
Everything oso I will try but wait first lah, I enjoy my weekend first. Haha.
I forgot to attach url thimmm. Soli hoh.
http://organicsamm.com/2007/11/24/my-first-attempt-at-baking/
Eh? Budenhor when I see your post, I thot you steal other ppl’s content. Hahaha.
Hi mumsgather,
Wah… content thief? The idiot need to be burn in hell.. I saw what Samm did to her blog..so funny, you should try it out too..
Have a nice weekend!
I’m working on it. Thanks!
whoa! lidat also can one ah? not shameful one meh these “people” *shake head*
*Shake head* dunno what to say.
erm….apart from telling the host, maybe the domain registrar and google or yahoo as well? Sorry I am not much of help.
I’ve written to Google and the host, so lets wait and see….
wa… like that also can wan meh… *_*
On the net, anything oso can ler…
Ok, if you can’t get it resolved, and if you really want to take this to the next level (means getting nasty), here’s what you can do.
1. Find a friend who has webhosting. (Or maybe you)
2. Post some post about parenting, just post as normal. Create a 1×1 pixel image called pixel.jpg, and upload it to the webhost. (So the picture can be accessed by http://www.someurl.com/pic/pixel.jpg)
3. The copier will copy your blog post and the image links as well.
4. Wait a few days and confirm that your blog post has officially been stolen and posted at the other website.
5. Edit your blog post, and remove the pixel.jpg image link.
5. Find a really offensive image on the net, or just a picture scolding the website. Personally, I would find a pic of goatse (if you don’t know what goatse is, don’t even google it. I’m saving you). Change the name of the pic to pixel.jpg, and replace the old pixel.jpg.
6. Reload the copied website, and offensive image should now appear on the website.
7. Repeat for future blog post as necessary.
Since yours is a parenting website, I suggest not to go too offensive on the images, just something that says the original article can be found at mumsgather.blogspot.com would be good enough.
Oh dear, I need to get back to work liao. Damn Fridays!
*Disclaimer again: If you already know what goatse is, then by all means, go ahead and use a goatse pic. Otherwise, don’t even try looking for it. Please.
Phew! Thats too much info for a non-techy 40 year old Ah Soh. Haha. Since they’ve been picking up my images as well. I just went ahead and posted as normal first. Yeah. Darn Friday. This is spoiling my Friday, giving me so much errr…. maintenance work on my blog.
The numbering is a bit off, so it should be 5, 6, 7, 8.
By the way, do not miss step #5. 😛
Here is my fake post. I didn’t post a goatse (which incidentally I had to google to find out). I’m just an innocent ole auntie running a child friendly Parenting Site after all. *whistling innocently*. Oh, and thanks very much for the info. I am sure it will be useful for the other readers to keep as reference.
MG – Remember last time I changed my pandan layer cake pic with Saddam Hussein? It was the most hilarious one.
Ah hahahaha. Yes. I remember. It was really hilarious. I laughed till the tears rolled down my face you know.
Aiyah, your fake post should include some sort of indication that shows your site’s URL. At least ppl will get a chance to then visit your site for the real thing. 🙂
I’m looking forward to seeing the fake post in the ‘other’ website.
Oh itu macam ah. Ok ok. I go and put.
Klaw’s method is damn effective. 😀
Yeah, very good method indeed. 🙂
Oh my! I hope the fake site will get shutdown soon.
I hope so too. 🙁
your blog has been copied, mean it is popular..haha.. comment in her blog and scold her..
Its not a very nice way to be popular. Theres no space for comments on the blog.
ooh…not again….
I also realize some of my post has been taken by “robot” to put in some stupid blog…I saw it in the incoming link…sian , dunno what to do.
Yah sien. Copy a few post oso I dunno what to do adi. Copy the whole blog? *pengsan*
Try this:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
I reported 2 the other day and those results were removed.
You can type in site:www.xxx.xxx (splog’s url) and the results will be out. Use those results to report.
As for getting the offending site to remove your posts, depends lor. Some will, most won’t. I tried once was making sure that every of my post had a copyright statement that even gets copied on the site. So when someone is reading the post from the site, they know it’s stolen content. This is effective if they’re stealing from your feeds. You can install one of those plugins that allow you to have a disclaimer or copyright notice.
Hey thanks Sesame. I saw that the splog has a google sitemap on its site. I use google sitemaps so maybe they are abusing that so I wrote to google about that. Hopefully they will investigate, otherwise it would be too tiring to key in each url everytime I post!
Hey! Something off the topic of theft. Really nice blog you have here. Love the banner.
As for the theft issue. Look at the bright side… Feel proud that people actually copying wholesale. Proves how popular and well written your entries are.
Well, thank you for improving my mood. Haha. 🙂
Wow, your blogs are very popular. Copy one or two posts is not enough ah? The whole blog somemore. People nowadays, really no integrity.
I like Klaw’s idea.
Yah, copy wholesale also can. 😛
sorry to hear that. i can’t give any help or advice because i’m not so sure how they do that. anyway, i can only show my support to u. try anything to get the faker down ya!! good luck!
Thank you. It picked up my fake post but looks like they couldn’t care less.
Never knew this could happen.. hmm..
This kind of spoils the fun of blogging don’t you think?
Hmm.. New to this, but blogging seems dangerous..
I guess so. I was really unhappy previously when I wrote a wedding anniversary post dedicated to my hubby and someone took that and pretended she wrote it! Such a personal post also can curi. *Shake head*
Aiyoh…. why you so ‘tau-mei’ one???
Hope you can find the idiot and kick his/her ass a bit!
Sorry, not much of help…
Whats “tau-mei”?
remove creative commons and sue them >.
I wish it was so simple.
Love the fake post!
Maybe I should keep that post sticky for a while.
Hahaha,
They copied it already here 🙂
Yeah. But they don’t seem bothered by it. Now what? Hmmmm….
I’ve seen my entries appearing in some other blog before but they usually are in snippets (excerpts) and have permalink that links to my entry. Those websites seem to be auto-generated and picks up contents from internet quite randomly. They aren’t real websites, not really maintained by a human – likely just a script or a program. As for you case, I can’t really conclude since it doesn’t link you, doesn’t have contact details, doesn’t have adverts… If view using mozilla firefox, the website appears quite mangled too. Messy.
Yeah, its messy in my IE too. Looks like just set up or just someone trying out some tricks.
I didn’t see my comment. Never mind, Trinity has the same problem as you. Maybe you want to drop by and read her posts on this.
An award and a tag for you.
Â
Whats trinity’s link?
Hey.. MG,
Sorry to hear about the copying thingie. How do one check if you post kenna daylight robbery..??
I think you can check using copyscape or you can simply google some unique search terms from your own blog and see if something else turns up. However I chanced on this quite by accident. I linked to this blog from my other blog and when the splog picked up that post, I could see its incoming link from my wordpress dashboard so I naturally clicked on it and got a nasty surprise.
http://via-gra-fan.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-longkang_04.html
this site was a carbon copy of my blog…100% and was lucky. iw rote in to complain and the last time they copied was on the 4th of December. I dont mind if they post snippets but they steal everything and make it like it is their own.
Oh No. Looks like they’re still doing it. I see the latest 7th December post of yours. No wonder you watermark your images. I used to do it but got lazy. Aiyoh, even though you have My Longkang on your images they also call themselves My Longkang! *shakes heads* I wonder what is the motivation. There is no ads or anything on the carbon copy site.
Alamak why lidat, hmmm maybe if you write like me nobody will wan to copy, kenot get marnie spelling all salah wan, kekeke, i am so soli old kawan hope this problem gets resolve soon, it really sucks also feels kinda creepy kinda stalker-ish lidat.
Aiyah. Don’t remind me about stalkers. Remember I told you about the one who keeps on searching for “mumsgather” every few minutes everyday for the past 2 years now. Its still happening. It gives me the creeps who on earth would want to search for the term “mumsgather” everyday, every other minute. Even I don’t monitor my blogs that closely. Sigh!
I just wonder…how did u find out that ur content has been stolen in the first place? sorry abit dumb…but tot it will be good for me to know…
Theres copyscape and you can google your unique content to see if anything else turns up but I found out quite by accident. I had linked to this blog from the other and when that content was picked up by the copier, this blog picked up the incoming link from the spam blog.
someone use my website content & also steal my website bandwidth, so i followed what Klaw said
Ivan, good for you for taking those screenshots as well and shame on the copier. Boo! (to the copier I mean, not you. Haha.)
It’s actually the RSS Agregator Feed which is where they leeched the content from.And all the images and stuff and pass off as theirs. I took this issue with the spam plugin author before and best thing is…whois the domain of the infringing site,and ask their host to remove them,slapping a $5000 penalty along with it.
It’s easy money to sucker the hosts to do the dirty legwork for you.
Best regards
azrin @ http://www.azrin.net
I wrote to the host but I’m still waiting …….
Hi MumsGather 🙂
Azrin above is correct, looks like they’re running a wordpress plugin which copies your RSS feed and publishes automatically, which means the owner of that blog probably never looks at it and won’t care much about you sneaking stuff onto their site.
The Bad News: Unless the host will do something about it, there’s not a lot you can do. This sort of thing is becoming more and more popular amongst spammers, and Google often won’t take action as there is so much to deal with.
The Good News: Google has got pretty good at determining the original source of copied content, so it’s likely your blog won’t be suffering any duplicate content penalties.
As well as running a parenting community site, my day job is as a professional online marketer, and my advice would be to install a plugin for wordpress ( try this one http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/simple-feed-copyright-wordpress-plugin/ – Not tested or connected to me) which will automatically add a copyright statement at the bottom of your feed. Not only will this make sure readers of the copied site know where the original content comes from, but will also link back to your post which shows Google that you are the original author and that the spammer’s blog is duplicate content.
Hope this helps! Feel free to email me and I can offer more help or advice. I hate these types of scammers!
Thank you so much Rob. I am going to check out that link as soon as I have the time. Thumbs down to scammers!