I wasn't going to blog about someone stealing our content and starting up their own website, but while investigating this thief, I came across someone far worse. Someone who can financially hurt people who aren't internet savy.
We have tracking programmes within our site that allows us to see where customers go on our website, as well as what keywords or other online site brought them to ours. It's a valuable tool that allows us to fine tune our site so customers can find products easier and gives us an idea what other products we can carry.
One evening while checking this programme, I came across a strange link. It showed someone coming to our website from another website's shipping page. Odd I thought, why is someone's website linked to ours from that page? On closer inspection I found a website that strangely looked similar to ours. Infact, most of the pages had been copied directly from ours (including the coding) which had links to our website.
I couldn't help but be outraged. I have spent a lot of time and money on our website. Money paying a professional to design a website unique to us. Time, many hours, weeks, months listing products, writing content and descriptions about the products. Working to get the site, and products to move higher up the google searches. Someone came in and within a likely 5 minutes copied everything and took it as their own. It's Copyright Infringement, it's stealing! and it's illegal.
Imagine you work for a company for many years. You are assigned a special job. You spend weeks on it. It's taken up most of your time, and you've put all your blood, sweat and tears into it. Then one day while you're out to lunch, a new employee joins the firm. They walk past your desk and see the folder containing all your work. They change the name on the folder to their own, and hand it to your boss and tell them it's their own. How would you feel? That's exactly the situation I found myself in.
Well I decided to take the legal route. Have their site taken down and if they don't comply, sue the heck out of them.
I took a phrase off their site which was on mine as well (obviously, because they had stolen it) and put it in a google search. I wanted to see where this thieving site ranked on google. Much to my horror I found another website with the same blurb stolen from my site. This other site, was more sinister though. Not only did they steal our content and try to pass it off as their own. But they took the products and marked them down to below wholesale prices. Why? Not because they have the product to sell. Because it's bait. They are running a scam that steals credit card information. See the only way people can purchase from this website, is by setting up an account. And setting up an account with them requires a credit card.
Unsuspecting victims may think they are getting a great deal on t-shirts for £4.99 (we pay nearly 3 x that for wholesale) but they're actually getting their credit card information stolen.
The website shows a UK address, but the whois name shows a registered name of someone who would appear to be from an Eastern block country.
I'm working now to get this second site taken down. But I wonder how many people have already been a victim?
The point of this blog? To warn people. Be very careful. If a deal looks too good to be true, it most likely is. Know who you are purchasing from. Look for websites with a long standing history, and customer interaction and reviews. Legitimate websites will have contact phone numbers and addresses. Both of these websites that stole our content do not. They have contact us pages which only have a contact form. Nothing that allows the website user to contact them directly.
Be smart, and be careful. You work hard for your money and some of these scam websites can steal your money in the time it took them to set up these bogus websites.
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