Pages

▼

Monday, December 19, 2011

Help! My Blog Has Been Stolen!!! Posts, pictures, everything!!!

OMG!  I nearly had a heart attack this morning when I was doing a google image search and saw a blog called my-superficialendeavors.blogspot.com (please don't drive traffic there).  Naturally I went to look at it and it is basically a copy of my blog all the way back to the very first post in 2010!!!  Though the most recent 5 posts or so are not mine - they are random car posts.  But when I look at all the posts throughout 2010 and 2011, every single one belongs to me!  They stole everything, from my content to my pictures!!!  As you all know, I post many pictures of myself on my blog so I feel so violated right now!

Here's a taste of that blog, you can see they even copied the font and everything!



Here are the blog archives - all mine except the most recent few:




Popular posts are all mine:



I have no idea why they chose me.  Surely there are more popular blogs out there to copy???  Ugh!!!

Does anyone have any idea what to do about this??  I googled this issue and it looks like Blogger is not very helpful.  I have contacted them anyway, and have got an automated email response saying I have been added to their queue.  I have no idea how long it will take to resolve it, or IF they will resolve it!

I really want to get all my posts removed from that blog ASAP, and possibly shut it down completely!  So if anyone has any experience or ideas, please please let me know!
at

9 comments:

  1. MonicaMonday, December 19, 2011 at 3:12:00 PM PST

    Hoooooly poo. I've never seen this. I would just assume that someone is trying to get ad revenue from it?

    I know there are apps out there to copy blogs, but you typically have to have your password for that. Definitely change your password ASAP!

    There has to be something Google/Blogger can do if you cite copyright violations...

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMonday, December 19, 2011 at 3:13:00 PM PST

    I would contact the blogger and threaten legal action.. Tell them this is copyrighted material (artistic works are automatically copyrighted - IN CANADA they are, and I suspect they are in USA as well, though I don't know much about american copyright law) and that you are going to take legal action if they don't remove the material immediately.

    You could also contact the police- most have internet crimes divisions who would deal with this. They'll likely order the person to remove your material, or you can seek an injunction (a court order requiring the person to remove the material).

    I'd say what the person is doing is that they've likely set the advertising on the blog (usually called "Monetise") so that advertisers pay a small amount every time the blog is viewed. Lame either way! Good luck with it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousTuesday, December 20, 2011 at 10:33:00 AM PST

    Google "DMCA takedown notice" - I wouldn't contact the police, this is super common and I don't know of any internet police that would help you. You can write a DMCA takedown yourself, or pay like $100 and have a lawyer do it. Hope this helps!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousTuesday, December 20, 2011 at 11:00:00 AM PST

    This may be a Blogger's technical issue. They let someone created that ID because it does have a dash in their name, which makes it different from your site. It's very likely that there is a bug in how they pull the entries for each blog. Your entries is probably pulled automatically to the other blog because the "dash" was ignored in their code. Don't freak out yet, I don't think someone is trying to steal your blog. Though I suggest that you may want to back up what you can while waiting for them. I'm sorry it happened.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My Superficial EndeavorsTuesday, December 20, 2011 at 8:24:00 PM PST

    Thanks guys! I still have yet to hear back from Google and am researching more on what to do. It probably shouldn't bother me so much but I hate that someone is impersonating me out there with all my pictures!! It's just so wrong, and really upsetting! I hope to take them down ASAP...

    ReplyDelete
  6. strawb3rriesWednesday, December 21, 2011 at 7:28:00 AM PST

    This is the craziest thing ive ever heard!!! Sounds like you're doing just about all you can to resolve it though... good luck!

    lol weird that they are driving traffic towards car blogs... not exactly a top i've ever seen on here before :P

    ReplyDelete
  7. LeesaWednesday, December 21, 2011 at 7:37:00 PM PST

    This is unreal, I hope you get all of this sorted out quickly! G'luck!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. My Superficial EndeavorsWednesday, December 21, 2011 at 8:21:00 PM PST

    Apparently this happens quite a bit. I never knew about this before either! But they say if you have a blog that is mildly popular, chances are this has happened to you. And if you are really popular, there might be many copy cats and you will not be able to take them all down. Omg! It's horrible! There are softwares out there that will use different blog's RSS feeds to publish to the copy cat blogs as soon as the blogs publish a new post. So they compile all these posts on their blog as their own. But it seems that my thief is a little bit special since they are clearly aimed at me only (judging from the name of their blog), minus the car posts which are super random. Maybe they decided to change it up since my posts were not getting them enough ad revenue... LOL! Good!

    These people just want to steal advertising revenue from other people's work, but it's pretty stupid because they will never make any real money from it. Not to mention it's just plain wrong!

    ReplyDelete
  9. My Superficial EndeavorsMonday, December 26, 2011 at 11:06:00 AM PST

    Google took them down. Yay!!! Ok that took about a week.. not too bad.

    ReplyDelete