I had a disconcerting experience last night. I was doing research for an upcoming blog post and was wondering whether any blogs had discussed the specific topic before and did a google blog search with specific key words. To my surprise a url came up that was certainly NOT my blog but was citing one of MY posts. Of course I clicked to see what this URL was all about… http://iugiug9.dangertone.com
Upon clicking that link I was taken to a retro looking ugly blog which is cited as “American Bedu” and contains so many of my posts from the past several years. It did not have any fancy graphics but it does carry a bunch of google ads.
Now please — before I continue any further with this post, DO NOT click on the link I gave you. Why? All this will do is continue to support whoever cloned my blog.
The cloning is just a Google ad scam. If you can hijack contents from many bloggers you may be able to direct searches to the site and hope the visitors will click on those adds and make a few pennies for each click. The site is using RSS feeds to clone the content of other sites. The best approach is not to provide a link to the site and thus providing it with visitors.
If you are too curious and wish to see the cloned blog, then please do the following and report the site to Google in hopes that enough reports will raise a red flag with Google to close the Google ad account associated with the site. Here is how that can be accomplished:
– When you get to the site find the Google ads on the right
– Click on the bottom left corner where you see the words “Ads by Google”
– A Google page comes up you will find a link at the bottom with the flowing “Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw”. Click on that link to see the feedback form.
– Click on “Also Report a Violation?”
– Add a check mark next to “the website”
– Add a Check mark next to “The site is hosting/distributing my copyrighted content”
– Add a comment to the effect “This is a clone site that hijacks content from other blogs.”
– Provide your email to authenticate your comment if you want that option (not required but adds further legitimacy to your report)
This really takes less than 1 minute of your time, but it is worth reporting these content hijackers. Google does run a good business with their ads and they depend on reports like this to catch violators of their policies. The more people reporting the site the better the chances they will close the account.
And I guess under lessons learned, anyone else out there who has a blog should check time to time to make sure your blog has also not been a victim of cloning!!
Filed under: Saudi blogs, Technology, terrorism | 24 Comments »
