This morning I discovered one of my posts had been outright copied and pasted onto another blog.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been splogged.
I found the link on Technorati, since the doofus has pinged me, and with a little more searching found that many bloggers on WordPress.com had been splogged by this site.
I’ve since emailed anyone I can that is even remotely connected to the offending website and I hope to see it resolved soon.
In the meantime, these are some of the WordPress posts I found splogged there. You too may want to send abuse emails, which I will list at the end.
Paper vs. Plastic: A Modern Dilemna
Farmers Market Friends (Work in Progress)
Why the Dewey Square Market Is No More
No Tomatoes.
Sweetie, I’m lost in the supermarket…
mmmmm, Radishy
Miss Ziggy
I Found My Internet Coupons!!
Farmers Markets
The splogged posts are all found here: www.freegrocerycash.net
I’m purposely not linking it since I don’t want to drive any more traffic there.
Some of the places I emailed about the problem are:
e6eb4c00c0b7462fab017cbf9f48cdb5.protect@whoisguard.com
abuse@enom.com
http://consumerincentivepromotions.com/cs/?promo_name=grocerygiftcard_250 (this is the only ad on the splogger’s site, I doubt they’d appreciate the thievery)
You might want to include information about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in your emails (http://www.google.com/dmca.html)
It’s best not to be profane or use offensive language since it will get you nowhere. Be firm but polite. Request that the offending website be removed as soon as possible.
Other resources to protect yourself from splogging:
Splogs: Spam Blogs and Stolen Content
What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content
Using Google Alerts to Check for Content Theft
If you ever find other splogs online, report them to SplogSpot and they will be put into a database.
Sploggers are losers! Good for you to go after these thieves who steal content from others because they are too dishonest, lazy or stupid to create their own. This particular site makes it hard because there are no comments or contact points. You might also contact the domain owner (from “whois”) and the registrar hosting the website.
Here is information on how to file a DMCA complaint against a splogger:
http://www.devtopics.com/how-to-file-a-dmca-complaint/
Keep up the fight! Good luck in your pursuit!
Glad you found it! Have you ever used Copyscape to check for this? I just use the free version every once in a while…
DevTopics -
Thanks for dropping by my humble blog. :) And an even bigger thank you for the resources you provided! I learned a lot and it was really effective.
Jennifer -
I just discovered Copyscape for the first time yesterday but I plan on doing their premium service as soon as I can. I want to regularly monitor for my content after this. I did set up a Google Alert using a phrase from each of my posts and I hope that will help as well.
you go girl! keep up the hunt and you will succeed in stopping the thieves!
Great post! The site http://homeimprovementnewsZZZZZ.blogspot.com/ has been stealing our conent (note that I added the ZZZZZ so that wordpress doesn’t send another link there. They’ve got adsense running and I’ve been meaning to send a letter to abuse@google.com to see if I could get it taken care of. At LEAST they are linking back because they are simply dropping the RSS feed – but I’m sure they are syphoning our traffic, and the traffic of many others.
There are a few things here I feel the need to say and offer.
First, do not link to the spam blogger. Though it may seem like a good way to shame them, it only helps them in the search engines as they gain ranking and link love from this post. Linking them literally helps them and hurts you.
Second, it seems like most of the spam blogs are on WordPress.com. Send a DMCA notice, using the template on my site, to dmca at wordpress.com and get those sites taken down. They are VERY good about doing this at Automattic and I have spoken with them directly on this issue. These guys take this issue seriously and WILL act.
Finally, if there is anything that I can do to help, please let me know. I’ll gladly assist any way that I can.
I’m here to help.
ForcedGreen –
Thanks! I was just pleased at how quickly they removed the post.
Fred -
I would send that letter as soon as you can because I’m sure you’re right about it stealing your traffic. Even if you’re not into blogging for the money, it’s still just so rude!
Jonathan Bailey -
I am glad that I remembered not to actually link to their site, it’s just the url, because I sure would hate for them to benefit even more off of my blog!
I will write a DMCA to wordpress; I hadn’t thought of that. I did write an email noting to them that it seems WordPress blogs are also being targeted. From the research I did online, it seems there was a similar problem on Blogger some time ago.
Thank you very much for your insights, and your blog. I’ve added it to my feed because I found so much helpful information on it.
Wah! Thanks for the heads up. I just saw the incoming link — this is not the first time. I HATE this. It’s a total time-suck and I have not had any luck stopping it before or even getting ANY response from those to whom I reported the problem.
I’l look at Copyscape. Google gave me nothing but more and larger rabbit holes to go down.
Cheers,
J