Posted by Mark in Things like this don’t happen often. Yesterday someone approached me on IM and asked me if I had any work for them, out of nowhere. I have never talked to this person before. It had to be one of the worst day for this guy because when he showed me his blog, the very first article was stolen from this very blog word to word. I had a chat with the guy and I am posting the conversation below. I told the “content thief” that I won’t release his name but would let everyone know about the blog and the main domain of the site, so I will keep my word and will keep his identity a secret. However, I will release his blog URL and the main URL.
Here is the conversation,
As you can see from the conversation above he was really nice and kept the blog up while I took a few images of the stolen posts. I did end up chatting more than what is shown above but didn’t really think it was necessary to include it here. I had to keep chatting to make sure he didn’t take the blog down which he eventually did.
Stolen Article #1
Original Article on Applicant
Stolen Article #2
Original Article on Shoemoney
Stolen Article #3
Original Article On LinkPopularityMatters
Stolen Article #4
Original Article on Latitude Group
I think at this point he realized that I was actually taking images of the posts he had stolen. When I tried getting to the next page to find where else he had stolen articles from, this is what I got,
main site : sentersoftech.com
Well, there you have it. Hopefully he got a lesson. One thing is for sure, web sure has made this world a small place. Not sure how this guy got me on his IM, ended up asking me for some work and shared his blog URL with me. What happened after that is what you just saw.
Apologies to the guy (content thief) for letting this out but you shouldn’t steal content from others and call it your own. Hopefully you won’t do it again.
No related posts.
Unfortunately with RSS feed grabbers, this is becoming more widespread. I’ve had a few issues like this myself, and it’s a pain to chase up.
One of the tools I’ve started using is Ozh Better Feed. This places a footer code in every blog post (as well as RSS feed) attributing copyright and backlink to the original piece.
So blogs that auto-trawl and auto-post can’t get around your copyright.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a great start and one of many tools that will hopefully stop content theft like this.
http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/wordpress-plugin-better-feed-rss/
You were lucky this guy was scared by your threats. But, unfortunately, there are other guys like him out there that don’t give a dime on ethics. And we would need a fortune to sue all of them.
First off, congrats on the successful resolution and for the entertaining post. I always love seeing content thieves get what they deserved.
On that note, two things. First, if you’re interested in these kinds of topics, you may want to sign up for FairShare if you haven’t, it is simply FairShare.cc, it can track your content and let you follow up as you see fit.
The reason I say that is I am almost certain there are many more out there doing the exact same thing.
Second, if ever you need/want help with a case, let me know. I’m happy to assist. Just drop me a line.
On that note, thank you again for the article!
@Danny : Thanks for the link. Will have to give it a try
@Vlad : Well, I wouldn’t really sue them but hey it worked
@Jonathan : Glad you enjoyed the article. Thanks for letting us know about Fairshare. And thank you for taking the time to comment and making us aware of Fairshare.
[...] My Encounter With a Content Thief – Caught in the act of stealing blog content. On Applicant.com. Thanks to @plagiarismtoday for sharing the link. [...]
iam talking to the same kid right at this very moment the same thing happen to me he just showed up on my messenger one day and started the same speel he did here ….do u have work for me etc etc lol i did some research on the url and found this article lol
thanks for posting this
Wow, the odds of that happening must be tiny. Great job catching the thief red handed. Would have loved to see you yank him around a bit more, asking who the great writer is so you could hire him etc. but still well done sir.
Just today found scrapers stealing my posts and found fairshare via Jonathan Bailey. Seems like a great tool.
Thanks for the info, i am just writing a few articles on the subject of content stealing and you have really helped me out! Thanks :0)I especially like when you accused him of stealing ‘Articles from your bog’ ha ha
Damien
cheap web designer Manchester
Thank you for the write up! Also, I noticed that your RSS feeds aren?t working. Could you take a look at that?