Stolen web site

NetHosted Customer Joined: 23 Jun 2006 Posts: 6

I run a small web site hosted here with nethosted.
It's nothing elaborate, just hacked together using Front Page.
The site consists mainly of photographs of Newcastle and North East England taken by me over the last few years.
Not commercial, purely a hobby.

Someone has nicked it !!!!
Or should I say copied it and published it on the web.

I became aware of this when the cheeky sod left a message in my guest book saying that his / her site was better than mine!

My site is http://www.monkchester.co.uk

The copy is at http://newcastle.890m.com

The only things that appear to have been changed are that my site has been put in a frame, the background colour and the email / guest book links have been altered.

I emailed the address on the copy web site (contact@newcastle.890m.com) but the only response so far was the automated reply "thank you, i will contact you as soon as possible"

Three questions
Is there anything I can do to get the copy site removed?
Why would anyone go to the bother of copying a site like mine, and publishing it?
How can I stop the offender copying any more material I put on my site?

Any advice (of the not too technical variety) would be appreciated

Thanks
Chris

NetHosted Customer Joined: 11 Mar 2005 Posts: 51

I cant help you I'm afraid but i get this when i look at the stolen site.

You see this page because system administrator of 000webhost.com is currently checking this website for malicious content. This redirect will be removed once we will finish manually checking all files on this account. As far we check over 100 websites it can take about 2-4 hours to complete. If you are owner of this website you will get email confirmation once its done.

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5651

Chris,

It appears the site has now been removed by it's webhost.

It's really hard to know why people do this, it may well by completely automated (a script does it all with no user input).

There is nothing you can do about this due to the nature of the internet I'm afraid!

Thanks,

Andrew

NetHosted Customer Joined: 23 Jun 2006 Posts: 6

Thank you Barry and Andrew

I'm pleased it's now gone.

Looking at Awstats for last month, there was an awful lot of activity from one particular IP, 800Mb over three days. I'm almost certain that this was the culprit.
Whether it will do any good or not, I don't know, but using cPanel, I have blocked it.

Thanks again
Chris

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5651

Chris,

Hopefully this will prevent this individual from attempting this again!

Thanks,

Andrew

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 10:23 pm Post subject:

Hi Chris

I don't see any copyright notices on the site. It would be worth your while just putting a standard copyright notice at the bottom of each page as a minimum. It won't stop people like the joker who copied your site, but it's a basic tool in your armoury.

On one site I worked on, I added a copyright notice to the EXIF data of all the photos. Most people wouldn't know it was there. You just have to cover yourself

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 10:11 am Post subject:

I believe I have read somewhere that some black hat hackers are making copies of sites purely to get good google rankings to get lots of page views. They have of course added trojens to the pages so they can add visitors to their botnets. This may have been what was going on here. Then again I could be completely wrong....

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 12:40 pm Post subject:

Here's the routine
1. Steal a website.
2. Host it somewhere on the internet (free hosting)
3. Tell the real owner of the website, what you've done and tell him that your fake website is now better than the original.
4. Owner is now wound up, and sends link of fake website to all his friends, posts on a blog, etc
5. Instant traffic to the website
6. Profit!!

NetHosted Customer Joined: 23 Jun 2006 Posts: 6

Kev
Pretty much what happened in my case.
I didn't however 'get too wound up' ('

')
or pass the url on to anyone else, (apart from this forum)
I must give a little bit credit to 000webhost, where the copy site was hosted.
Soon after the site went life they suspended it while checking for 'malicious content'
During that period I emailed them pointing out that 99% of the content was copied from my site.
I received a reply yesterday morning saying that the site had been removed.

As for copyright notices - to be honest, I'm not really that bothered if anyone copies a few photos.
But I will add a notice to the home page and any future content.

Maddog
'black hat hacker'.
Never heard the phrase before. But if I hear it in future your avatar will immediately come to mind

Chris

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 10:35 am Post subject:

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5651

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 10:47 am Post subject:

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5651

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 10:56 am Post subject:

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5651

Well when we get an affiliate scheme together you may well be able to get paid for having your sites with us

Andrew

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