Someone just cloned my site..

MrMedia

MrMedia

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And put the whole thing up on the .org version of my exact domain name.

They even left all my ad codes in... How worried should I be?
 
Did you use canonical tags on your site?

If you did (and if they still remain on the clone) you should be fine as it will tell search engines what to focus on.

And while I haven't needed to do this myself, couldn't you do a DMCA removal with Google?
 
I do - the clone was only registered yesterday it seems.
All my ad codes are still in place so what are they playing at?
 
I've seen this more than once. It's usually someone who wants to replicate some of your functionality, versus steal your content or whatever. They dupe your site and then try to start stripping it down or study it. But in this case, considering they bought the .org... it might be malicious in some sense. In their haste they leave ad codes up which almost always immediately notifies the victim of the idiocy.

I would most definitely send a takedown notice, PRONTO, to their hosting company, explaining that it's literally your website with your ad-codes, etc. They'll probably yank it within hours. I wouldn't do the takedown with Google yet. I'd do the minimum I had to to protect myself without creating an enemy. Hopefully they just get disheartened and abandon the project. Then you scoop up the domain later to protect yourself.

I'd consider going ahead and buying the .net. I wouldn't go buckwild and buy up every version possible, but I'd at least get the main three of com/org/net and redirect the others to my site.
 
You might also be able to get the registrar to look into it and suspend the domain and even possibly transfer it to you. At the least you could have them freeze it and yank the nameservers.
 
auto response from the host - seems scammier by the second.... their form doesnt work and the website looks abandoned...

Thank you for contacting abuse@ecatel.net

Please be aware Ecatel is an Internet Service Provider, providing internet
access and bandwidth by means of dedicated servers..

We are not a hosting provider and, we do not control the servers of our
customers.

All dedicated servers are UNMANAGED, therefore the content on each server is
not under our control.

Ecatel does not offer any domain registration and/or hosting services.

To open a ticket, please use the Notice & Takedown form which is located on
our website at:

http://www.ecatel.net/ntd.php

Thank you!

Ecatel abuse department.


I am also flagging with namecheap the registrar.

 
Something just occurred to me..

How did they clone the whole website including all content and plugins etc without having access to the backend of my site?
 
MrMedia said:
Something just occurred to me..

How did they clone the whole website including all content and plugins etc without having access to the backend of my site?
Click to expand...
I was wondering the same thing.

I had a few website cloner referrals in my analytics. Maybe I should check them out lol
 
MrMedia said:
How did they clone the whole website including all content and plugins etc without having access to the backend of my site?
Click to expand...

wget (Downloading an Entire Web Site with wget) or SiteSucker can do this in a matter of seconds.

THE ONE THING YOU NEVER EVER EVER EVER DO is try to use YOUR login credentials at the clone website's login! NEVER EVER EVER DO THAT!!!!!!

For those that can't figure out the reason, it's because a hacker could have simple cloned your site, then created a fake login that simply emails them the username and password anyone attempts to login to the cloned site with (cause people will wonder how they got the whole site and see if it's a backup or complete duplicate of theirs by logging in!!!). What you've done is basically given them your username and password for your legit site!
 
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Another possibility is it's all about spoofing your email. People have done this a ton with traffic sources to create fake ad accounts for cloaking.

Dupe some site that it big and legit looking. Use the email to spend off requests for advertising accounts. Cloak said advertising accounts to rebill offers. If you have a woman lifestyle magazine it fits nicely for skin/diet ads pointing at some article while in reality they redirect the traffic to the rebill article.

This would be why they don't change the ad tags too - they really don't care about ranking or getting traffic to the site. Just tricking FB/Google/Yahoo into giving them another ad account.

Not sure exactly what the damage to you would be or best way to stop it though. That "host" is certainly going to ignore your DMCA it looks like. The next step I could think of is sending it to the ISP that's providing the data to that server, you said you're already going after registrar.
 
Sounds like that could be an angle. I noticed that they were pulling all the stylesheets and images etc from my cdn so I blocked them and it fucked up all the content they had ripped so now the site looks a mess. I did that last night but they still have not fixed it.

I researched the "host" and yeah they are basically a network for shady shit running private servers out of amsterdam.

Name cheap came back with their expected response saying it was on the host. I replied saying I was surprised they sold domain names to facilitate illegal activity such as this is such a blatant example. I said it was a newsworthy story and await their response :smile:

I dont hold up much hope for namecheap stepping up because in part I agree with their response but that doesnt mean I'm not going to push it.

If they use the .org email address and fake site to get ad accounts I have no exposure to that as far as I can see.

As you say @miketpowell - this is all about spoofing credibility - kind of like how one man operations set up "ad agency" websites in order to get ad accounts and media buys away.
 
As expected namecheap are looking for a US court order before they suspend the domain name. Damn.
 
Had a similar thing happen to a site the day after it was listed for auction. They didn't even rip the content, they just put up a fresh install on the .org using similar colors and a similar theme. These goofs didn't even have a chance to add any posts yet... strongly worded email from a law firm to the webmaster and host was all it took, site was down later that day.
 
It worked! I raised hell with name cheap and today they sent me an email from the scammer saying the site has been taken down! Success!!

Let this be a lesson guys - never settle.

Oh, and buy the .org and other extensions for your big brand project and don't be a noob :wink:
 
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