I am not happy, I have found that a certain aquaponics company (whose name I am not going to mention) stole my blog pages and posted them on no less than eight different spam blogs! There may even be more that I am yet to find.
I have reported all of them to blogger and hope that they are removed soon. I have also posted comments on some of the other people's blogs that had pages stolen and have requested that they also report these criminals to blogger, and they have said that they will.
Spam Blogs (with my stolen blog content) that I have found and reported so far. Do NOT click on them (I put a space in to make it difficult to click by accident):
conaquaponics.blogspot.com
diyaquaponicsrelax.blogspot.com
aquaponicssyst.blogspot.com
popuaquaponics.blogspot.com
susoftwr.blogspot.com
aquaponicshoust.blogspot.com
aquaponicsndiy.blogspot.com
diyaquaponicsblueprint.blogspot.com
aquaponicshoust. blogspot.com
aquaponicsndiy. blogspot.com
conaquaponics. blogspot.com
diyaquaponicsrelax. blogspot.com
diyaquaponicsblueprint. blogspot.com
popuaquaponics. blogspot.com
susoftwr. blogspot.com
and apparently even one from Russia which I am yet to click on: е-импорт.рф/4-foto/tree-onion.php
conaquaponics.blogspot.com
diyaquaponicsrelax.blogspot.com
aquaponicssyst.blogspot.com
popuaquaponics.blogspot.com
susoftwr.blogspot.com
aquaponicshoust.blogspot.com
aquaponicsndiy.blogspot.com
diyaquaponicsblueprint.blogspot.co
What happened
They cut and paste every word and picture from several pages from my blog, as well as several pages from other people's blogs. They even cut and paste the pages about the birth of my first daughter!!!
Why would they bother
They do this so that the blog appears legitimate, then they put an ad to their company on each of the pages. After people read through the blog for a while and feel connected to the blogger they are more likely to click on the link.
This does several things, first it may create some sales for their low quality products. Secondly it raises their profile on google so they come out at the top of any google search. The more pages that have links the higher the rating in a google search. They benefit from extra sales. Google explicitly forbids this kind of thing. I also reported all of these pages to google.
They remove links, but that is all
They seem to remove all of the internal links, which is not overly difficult. Yet they have not even read the posts that they steal. They have made these spam blogs this year (2016) yet some of the post headings are about other years. They even stole some blog posts from people which are month specific and posted them on a different month. Very poor effort. I have a post called "skirret harvest 2015", that post has a comment in the first sentence saying that it was written during Winter in Australia. These thieves stole that post and re-posted it in March 2016 and again in May 2016. Not terribly bright.
They write their own reviews
I think this heading is pretty self explanatory. They write reviews of their own company on different web pages they make and then spam them until they are at the top of a google search. They have written dozens of these ridiculous reviews, strangely they are all word for word exactly the same.
If you want a second opinion of any aquaponics company go onto any aquaponics forum and search for them there. No one who knows anything about aquaponics will deal with these criminals.
I have decided not to post the name of these criminals
It is not terribly difficult to find out who they are, but posting there name here may result in consequences (most likely these criminals doing something horrible to my blog) that I don't want to deal with. If you can't work out who they are send me a message and I can tell you privately. If these criminals had quality products they would not feel tempted to stoop this low. If someone is willing to create at least EIGHT different spam blogs and steal content from other people's blogs you can NOT trust them.
What have I done
First I reported the spam blogs to Blogger and Google on 16 September 2016. I have been told by other bloggers that even though I have reported all of these spam blogs that Blogger will do nothing. I will keep an eye on these spam blogs and see when/if they do anything.
Second I went onto one of the spam blogs and clicked on a few of the other stolen pages, then I tracked down the blogs they came from and sent them a message asking for them to also report these spam blogs. I personally would be wary of a message like this so I included the URL of the spam blog page that has their content, this way even if they do not want to click on the link they can google it.
Other than that I don't know what to do. My opinion of humanity is slipping all the time.
Update 22 October 2016
All eight of those spam blogs are still active. They have even stolen more pages from my blog over the past week. Clearly this is contravening blogger policy which is meant to result in the blogs being deactivated and deleted. Even though these spam blogs have been reported nothing has been done.
Update 17 December 2016
All eight of the spam blogs are still there three months after being reported. They continue to steal more posts, I wonder if they will ever bother stealing this one? It would appear that reporting them was a waste of time as blogger and google have no interest in dealing with them. I must admit that I am disappointed.
Update 26 February 2017
All eight of the spam blogs are still there. It has been over five months since I reported them all. It is seeming increasingly unlikely that blogger or google have any intention of doing anything. I find it odd how many legitimate blogs get shut down yet these eight spam blogs remain active.
Update 25 April 2017
All eight blogs are still there and continue to steal more of my pages. It has been over seven months. I wonder why both blogger and google allow this kind of thing to continue...
Update 27 August 2017
After 11 months all eight spam blogs are still up and running. When reporting the blogger page says not to report them more than once. As it has been so long, and those eight blogs are clearly spam blogs, I don't think that blogger or google will ever close them down.
Update 3 February 2018
After quite some time all eight of the spam blogs are still up and running. It appears that blogger has no interest in removing them. In a strange twist most of my blog posts seem to have disappeared from google and do not show up in a search, while the spam blogs are easy to find. Very disappointing.
Update 30 June 2019
All eight spam blogs are still active. I reported them to blogger and they have done nothing. These spam blogs are intended to skew search engine rankings so I reported to google, and they have done nothing.
What is even worse is a horrible little man by the name of David Bell has done a similar thing. He cut and paste every word from some of my posts onto his web site (but he used his own pictures). When I emailed him and requested he remove my content he accused me of stealing my content from other websites. Perhaps he has read these spam blogs and is partially literate or not that bright so could not work out that my posts were written several years before these spam blogs stole my content. Or perhaps he is just a miserable human and a lazy thief. I have a feeling David is the latter.
Update 30 October 2023
It took google seven years to remove these blogs (or the thieves decided to take them down). This has happened recently because I checked not long ago and they were all still there.
John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
Hi there, Pudget from The Toxicologist Today blog. Thanks a lot for letting me know about this thugs trying to still my blog also. As soon as I can have some proper time I will do my very best to report them to blogger. Thanks a lot for your hard work, mate!
ReplyDeleteHi Pudget,
ReplyDeleteno worries letting you know, it was the least I could do. Your stolen pages may be listed on other spam blogs too, I don't know, I only searched for mine. A fast way to find out is to search a sentence of one of your pages on google and surround it with "quotes" and then click on the link that says show similar omitted results. Good luck finding them.
I have reported the spam blogs twice now, first I reported the spam blogs as listed in the post above 2 weeks ago hoping that the blogs would be removed, then one week ago I reported an individual stolen page on each of the spam blogs with the same title/text/pictures.
Unfortunately all of the spam blogs are still there. They are getting several hundred to several thousand views each week!
I will keep an eye on them and if blogger ever removes the spam blogs I will try to comment here.
There's only so much we can do; it's our hard work being stolen and improperly used by vampire idiots.
ReplyDeleteMy friend had a problem because of spam which deleted his blog and his account too. I think, I should share this post with him. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteHi James,
DeleteI have heard stories of people's blogs being removed as they were suspected spam blogs. I don't understand how this happens as I reported these eight spam blogs a month and a half ago and nothing has happened. The spam blogs have even copied more of my pages since I reported them. It is all very strange.