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Someone copied my website

by netmatrix
27 replies
I setup wordpress on a new domain a few days ago. I've only added a couple of pages of content.

I checked the stats log and noticed a site was sending a lot of hits so I visited the site. The site was an identical copy of my site, what?!

Everything was exactly the same, they were hotlinking all the images, scripts. etc. I immediately disabled hotliking via cPanel and their site stopped working.

Today, I visited their site and noticed they have forwarded it to my site via 301 redirect.

Ironically enough, the whois lists an attorney as the registrant. He's even located in my state.

This seems rather strange and funny, but still, any need to be concerned? Is someone planning a hostile takeover? lol
#copied #website
  • Profile picture of the author rickkettner
    I would call them up and try to figure out what's going on . Is their WHOIS info masked?
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  • Profile picture of the author Peter Gregory
    Very strange indeed. But for now, if they are doing a 301 redirect to your site, that would be a good thing for you, no? They can't do much damage like that
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    • Profile picture of the author HorseStall
      Seems odd, maybe worth having a conversation.
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      • Profile picture of the author hariklia
        That doesn't sound right, something is amiss, I would get to the bottom of things before I do anything else on my site.
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    • Profile picture of the author netmatrix
      Thanks for all the suggestions.

      The plot thickens...

      1. The google 'cache' of the website that copied my content was from another website of mine, also brand new.

      2. I found an additional website that had copied my website, these are all generic domains. Example: ty32983.com, hdsjgs.com, etc.

      3. They are now all forwarding their domains via 301 to my site.

      4. The whois info is public so I'm noting their info. The domains are registered through the same registrar only 3 days apart but under different names. One name is based in the US and the other is in China. However, they have couple of similarities in the info so I know for sure they are owned by the same person.
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  • Profile picture of the author ContentArticleWriter
    This is rather strange. Luckily I have never encountered such situation but I know of people who have gone through it. I think you have the benefit of at least having the whois info so you may want to contact this attorney and find out his intentions. If you can not get a hold of him then I think you should just tough it up and move on.
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  • Profile picture of the author carterstory
    as others have said.. I'd do a whois search..
    even if it only lists the host / domain company.. send the owners a nice letter explaining what is going on.. KEEP THOSE LOGS, maybe look into doing a formal DMCA takedown request to the host.
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  • Profile picture of the author rayallen
    Banned
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    • Profile picture of the author salegurus
      Originally Posted by rayallen View Post

      Seems odd, maybe worth having a conversation
      Maybe you should try adding some value instead of copying other members posts?
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      • Profile picture of the author halfpoint
        If he's simply 301 redirecting to you that's probably not a bad thing, however, you do have to question his motive..

        This is really strange. :confused:
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
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        • Profile picture of the author Ashley Gable
          Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

          Or, if not that, at least do a 301 redirect so the original poster gets the traffic ...

          haha! very good!
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  • Profile picture of the author greff
    Google the owner's name. See what pops up.

    Is it the same niche? It is strange.
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  • Profile picture of the author gman2319
    I faced this before. One of my sites which was offering a service seemed so much of a fit to a bigger niche site that he decided he will offer my service by simply redirecting one of his pages to my site.
    I didn't complain as all he did was a php redirect(not a 301 redirect)....and i was getting a bunch of traffic from him and all the ads that showed up to his traffic was from my site, so i figured no harm.

    If they are doing a 301 redirect, it is just an seo boost for you I assume. I dont see a downside to this, but I would like to know myself if there is something shady here that could be detrimental to you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ben Neil
    I was going to make a bad joke about China but it looks like it might be true. Sorry! I hope it works out to your benefit in some way. You do what R&D stand for on the internet? Ripoff & Duplicate although that's been applied to China's economy as well. It just sucks to be on that end of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Underground SEO
    That is really quite odd! It seems completely harmless with the 301 redirects but I don't know why anyone would do this unless they ultimately had malicious intent. Use Whois to try to phone them or contact dcma, they're pretty good to deal with for things like this.
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  • Profile picture of the author Peter Gregory
    I agree with everyone that this is definitely odd and if it were me I would look further into it and at least make attempts to contact the party doing this. However, I still for the life of me cannot see how a 301 redirect can hurt you in anyway so I really don't see what you have to worry about.

    If anyone has any suggestions as to how a 301 redirect could hurt his site I am all ears, but I cannot see any harm being done in anyway.
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  • Profile picture of the author rosetrees
    Originally Posted by netmatrix View Post

    Ironically enough, the whois lists an attorney as the registrant. He's even located in my state.
    If the attorney is legit, it may be that a client (or just a random person) is using his/her name and details. If it's a client, the attorney might be interested to know about strange activity. If the registrant isn't a client then the attorney would definitely want to know.

    Strange, generic web names like that make me think of scammers. I wonder if somehow they are trying to set up a scam that involves infecting people's computers with a trojan or script and that then redirects victims' computers to your site so that they believe they have visited a legit site.
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  • Profile picture of the author netmatrix
    I'm still looking into this. I have a suspicion of what's going on and will report back once I know for sure.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    Let us know ... would be interested to hear what you come up with.
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    • Profile picture of the author SteveSch
      Go to copyscape and run your site. When your report comes up so does a link to have any stolen content removed by the DMCA.

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author netmatrix
        Thanks to everyone for their replies and suggestions.

        Here is what I found after further investigation:

        I recently added a new dedicated IP address to my hosting account. Apparently, this used to be a shared IP and all of these sites that are forwarding to my domain are doing so because their domains are still pointing at this IP.

        Hence, not much to worry about. If anything, there are 5-6 sites pointing at my domain and they're just passing link love now. I set-up my server to 301 any domains pointing to my IP to my main site.

        Everything's cool
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  • Profile picture of the author The_Archer
    Scammer Alert!!

    This happens a lot. People in other countries will set up business with local law firms who give this person a business address. This way, they are legally entitled to do business in other countries. In USA like in Canada, all you need to do business in USA or Canada is an American or Canadian address so they can receive mail.

    Check out who the host is by checking Who.is: Whois, Website, Domain Name, and IP Tools - Who.is. Do some research on who the host is. A lot of oversees hosts, such as Gandi, located in France, does not monitor activities on their site, this means that scammers and crooks use this service to keep their identity private and or money laundering.
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    • Profile picture of the author Peter Gregory
      Originally Posted by The_Archer View Post

      Scammer Alert!!

      This happens a lot. People in other countries will set up business with local law firms who give this person a business address. This way, they are legally entitled to do business in other countries. In USA like in Canada, all you need to do business in USA or Canada is an American or Canadian address so they can receive mail.

      Check out who the host is by checking Who.is: Whois, Website, Domain Name, and IP Tools - Who.is. Do some research on who the host is. A lot of oversees hosts, such as Gandi, located in France, does not monitor activities on their site, this means that scammers and crooks use this service to keep their identity private and or money laundering.
      I think if you read the post directly above yours you'll see there was no scam going on in this case. I would venture to say that the OP found his answers and now the case can be closed.


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  • Profile picture of the author Kella Bella
    So you are getting free traffic cause of that? Dang that's pretty cool. Maybe you can get a sale or two out of it :-) Glad it wasn't anything deceptive someone was trying to do.
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