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Looking for advice ... someone hyjacked my site download page

by WebScript
7 replies
I am selling a package on eBay and elsewhere. On eBay I offer on DVD, and elsewhere as a download on my website. For eBay customers, some buyers ask to also receive the package by download. The package is a collection of website templates, ebooks, software, and PLR's.

I won't share the URL here because I am NOT trying to promote it here.

It has come to my attention that someone, (apparently a customer of mine), has decided to sell the package from their website. This is not the problem. Everything in the package includes resell rights.

The problem starts here...

They have duplicated my download page on their site... ! Including the download links to all the files on my site.

Now, even this is not a big problem to me because all those files on my site are in a password protected folder.

They copied the download page completely, including my contact details for support.

So now:
1) Their customers are given a download link to a page on their site.
2) Customers go there, and click in links to download files
3) Customers are asked to login, but they have no login details.
4) Customers are contacting me for support to get access to the downloads.

I don't know exactly what I can or should do about this... I'd like to:
1) Contact PayPal about this or ask the customers that contact me to contact PayPal and complain.
2) Contact their Domain-Name registrar to have domain-name shutdown
3) Contact their web-host to have website shutdown

I'm looking for suggestions on how to proceed.

Thanks

Kevin
#advice #download #hyjacked #page #site
  • Profile picture of the author Colin Palfrey
    I would suggest checking to see which website is sending them, then going to the buy button on that site and clicking it. This will give you the offending party's PP email address.

    Anyone that emails you for support that has bought from the other guy, give them his email address to complain.

    This will keep the wolves at bay while you contact the idiot responsible for the mess, and if they don't fix it in 24 hours then you will need to contact PayPal to have his payment button shut down.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marketing Cheetah
    Wow thats a very difficult situation. The part which I hated the most was copying your contact details. That is unfair. Try contacting the owner of the website and tell him to use contact information of his/her own otherwise I think PayPal might be able to take some action on this. I think hosting and registrar are out of this matter and will not be able to help you.
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  • Profile picture of the author JeedoAquino
    Hi Web,

    Have you tried getting in touch with that webmaster and informed him of the problem? I suggest you do that first and see where you should go to next after you get a reply from him.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marvin Johnston
    If this person has downloaded anything out of the normal, take a look at your website log. That should be able to give you some details of who might have done this. This is assuming you can't get good contact details from one of these people wanting login access as suggested above.

    Marvin
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  • Profile picture of the author Floyd Fisher
    Kevin:

    You really need to call the website in question, and let them know the mistake they made....and help them fix it.

    Nobody's hijacking your site...it's a newbie mistake. Just get it fixed and move on.
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    • Profile picture of the author WebScript
      Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher View Post

      Kevin:
      ...

      Nobody's hijacking your site...it's a newbie mistake. Just get it fixed and move on.
      Well perhaps "hijacking" is too strong of a term.

      But I would hardly call it a newbie mistake, or even a mistake at all.

      The website is an "Ebook Shopping Cart" site offering other scripts, ebooks, and website templates, ...

      The other items are small items and areprobably delivered directly from their site.

      The item that they are linking to my site has downloads totaling well over 1-GB.

      My guess is that they do not want to find/pay-for hosting that will support that large of a file-set and that much bandwidth.

      For me, it is not effecting my bandwidth because the page is password protected. It is more of a problem for his customers who are purchasing from him and not receiving their item. And some inconvenience for me to handle their support emails, even if just to refer them on.

      I have the persons website information which was given to me by one of their customers.

      So, I will email the website owner and ask them to stop... my guess is that they will not act and they will not respond.

      Thanks to everyone for posting here.

      Kevin
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      • Profile picture of the author DanTheSeoGuy
        From what you're saying I get the fact that this person knows what he's doing and he's basically ripping you off. The best way to handle this is to first send him an email asking him to NOT get you involved in his sales funnel and if he's not responding then you'll have to send a DMCA notice to his hosting company and provide proof (do a few screen shots).

        Hope this helps,
        Dan.
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