I just want to say to the owner of www.proparents.com and their hosting service – you have a lot of nerve stealing an entire website. OH I’m sure that really hurts you….
Like you have a heart…or brain.

In February ‘they’ made their registration “private” – guess because they know they stole my entire website: www.parentinghumor.com

I am on the hunt for an attorney – never thought I would actually have to go this far to get freaks to stop stealing.

ProParents.com gets the “YOU SUCK AWARD” today!

Trust me…
I’ve gotten content stolen many times. So many times….it doesn’t bother me at all to refer to these thieves as Lazy Asses!! Dirty SPLOG Mutants!! (Spammers that steal your blog’s content and use it on their blog or website as their own. They just take your feed and display it! Pigs they are!!)

Some of the losers that have stolen from me didn’t even bother to “lift” the content and change the code?! They ran my images with the original links, using my bandwidth.

So not only are they Lazy Jerks…..they are STUPID jerks at that.

And I’m not alone.

I’ve talked to, dare I say…..HUNDREDS of website owners that have gone through this….still go through it.

It truly is an ongoing battle. And if your website or blog is something you value….you’ll want to keep a diligent eye on the info highway….because Hijackers and Hitchhikers are everywhere.

What can you do to protect your original content?

Well….quite frankly…..not a lot. (I know…..it’s a crying shame!!) Unless you’ve got money to burn to hire those pricey Intellectual Property and Copyright Infringement attorneys. (Any of you attorneys out there take pro bono cases? Or offer discounts to us little people?? Didn’t think so!)

What I’ve started doing is really studying my referral logs. You can do this easily in your website control panel. It can give you some real tell-tale signs of someone nabbing bandwidth. Typically when you see a link sending you traffic that seems out of the ordinary – click on it…..go to the site. Betcha you’ll see one of your images or something.
I like to swap the image out and rename it and put something snippy in it’s place like…”This website owner is a thief.”

You can certainly use programs like CopyScape. I do. It gets pricey the more pages you have them watch…..but it can help.

You can also use Google Alerts. It’s totally free – and easy to set up. www.Google.com/alerts
You set it up to look for a name or a website link….and it will return the results to you daily if you like. So….if one of my website names come up on something new on the web….I know about it. I recommend this program whether you’re looking for content thieves or not. It’s really cool and can let you know whose talking about YOU or one of your websites.

There is AntiLeech for WordPress. A plugin that doesn’t prevent sploggers from coming to your blog – but can’t detect their “footprint” per say.

Digital Fingerprint for WordPress is another one that gets big raves.

Like I said…the battle is ongoing….
It can get very tiresome.
It always amazes me how many people out there just don’t give a damn about stealing someone’s content, images….what have you.

I had someone lift an ENTIRE website. ENTIRE website. There was no contact info…there was no whois info. I contacted the hosting service. I said….Please take down this site….they stole the entire site from me. Do you know what the host provider replied?? “F&$! OFF – You can’t tell me what to do!”

Niiiice.
To this day…..http://www.proparents.com/ is up and running with all stolen content from my website ParentingHumor.com.
Makes me sick. And I can do NOTHING…because I’m a small fry.

What are you using to protect your content? What works….what doesn’t?

Have you been the victim of theft??

Share your story….
At least venting allows some relief. And sharing what works can help everyone!