Spammers, Scraper Bots and Content Thieves - Special Announcement

12/14/2010

healthy_blogging

Content theft is a scourge that plagues online media producers. Just as other long time bloggers Darren Rowse and Brian Clark have been the victim of content theft, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before it would happen to this site, too. While doing routine web searches for our content and ranking on Google, I came across spam blogs (splogs) that have been using content stolen from Living Fit, Healthy and Happy.

The content thieves even go so far as to use the name of this website to deceive the search engines into giving them top page placement in the search results. If you happen to come across any site with the title "Nail fungus treatment Living fit, healthy and happy powered by typepad" be warned that it is a spam blog. Living Fit, Healthy and Happy has neither any affiliation with nor connection to any of those blogs or websites.

The content thieves are coming from such places as Paris, France; Farmington, Michigan; and Russian cities Saint Petersburg, Saratov and Zhirkov; the UK (ISP Hostmaniac dot com Customer Server); Pulong Gubat, Philippines; and many locations in India including such Indian cities Delhi, Madras, Mumbai, Patna, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Gurgaon and Vadodara.

Josh Trent plagiarized my article "9 Reasons Why People Don't Reach Their Fitness Goals". I posted a short version (Why Do Some People Give Up Before They Even Begin?) onto ezinearticles dot com on July 28, 2009 (you can read it here). This is because on 13 July 2009 I posted the full version on "Living Fit, Healthy and Happy" when it was hosted on blogspot.

Then some guy named Josh Trent pastes the ezinearticle version word for word on his own blog with a date stamp of July 29, 2009. Josh Trent didn't give me a backlink or any credit for the article. He couldn't come up with any original ideas so he had to scrape my content?

As of Tuesday 20 December 2011 the latest is from the Ukraine and identifies herself as Carolyn Pinker claiming that she wants to install code on the website (that's right, I'm calling you out). They use scraper bots to steal content which is then spliced together in nonsensical order to create spam blogs that host Google Adsense display ads.

What's insulting about it is that by doing this, they harm innocent advertisers who have ads which appear on those spam blogs. And what should be a concern to all of us are possible reasons why they created those splogs in the first place. They could use the money they get from Google Adsense ads to buy or fund who knows what.

Living Fit, Healthy and Happy has a disclaimer and privacy policy which includes our email address for anyone who wishes to write to us for questions about upcoming articles, suggestions for how we can improve the site to make it more enjoyable and useful to our readers ( and that's you!), etc. We do this because Living Fit, Healthy and Happy believes in disclosure and honesty.

I have already brought this to Google's attention as the content thieves are violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). But it's your right to know, too, because we all have a stake in keeping the internet safe and clean for everyone. The internet is a soil from which knowledge springs forth in the form of useful websites, but in that soil are weeds (content thieves). And the only way to get rid of weeds is to get them at their roots.

That's what I'm doing right now. In my role as site administrator and publisher of this website, I decided that it's just as important to you the readers. So I'm bringing it to your attention so that you'll know what to look out for.

So again, if you happen across websites that say "Nail fungus treatment Living fit, healthy and happy powered by typepad" or other stolen content, know that it is not Living Fit, Healthy and Happy. You come to Living Fit, Healthy and Happy because you want valuable and trustworthy health and wellness information. And that's right here. Those others are bad sites created by internet criminals who are trying to deceive you and all unsuspecting folks whom are unfortunate enough to stumble on them.

Identifiable plagiarists/spammers will be added to The Hall Of Shame.