Entire Web Site Illegally Cloned

It's my hope some of you can tell me whom to write at Google and anyone else who might be able to help me.

My entire web site, http://www.worldcountries.info, has been cloned by some unscrupulous individual and published under domain name http://www.world-and-countries.com.

Obviously, I would like Google to know I am not publishing duplicate content, and clearly I would like to contact someone else who might put a stop to this.

Thanks in advance.

Ron

 

Excellent looking website... Did you program it yourself?
I hate to add more bad news...But, It can also be found at www.bestworldcountries.com as well...

 

Thanks. Yes, it's all mine except for the page design, which I paid to have done. At least I won't have any problem proving it's mine. The WayBackMachine shows it as far back as November, 2004, and of course I have the Visual Basic program that generates the site.

The problem is going to be making sure Google does not penalize me when it spots the duplicate content. I've heard of this happening.

 

Do some digging, I bet those two clone websites are owned by the same person.

What a bunch of dicks!!!

Don't worry about penalization...Google may be a giant dumb robot, but...umm...ok

 

The WhoIs search reveals the domain information is not public. I wrote to the email listed as an administrative contact. It's some kind of privacy company.

 

Does anyone know how to find out who the web hosting service is? I haven't a clue how to dig into that...

 

http://abac.com/ for bestworldcountries

and the other one is zz30.net which seems to be owned by hostgator

 

May I ask how you did that... ?

 

did a ping, return this address
/69.65.4.130
hope it give you some lead

 

Where should I put this thread?

It doesn't belong in Google but I'm not sure where it should go.

 

Sorry, it started off with me wondering who to write at Google. The first post answered that question.

 

Who on earth would do something like this? Try to find his/her ISP and have them do something

 

Actually, by pure happenstance I have discovered the identity of the individual and will take appropriate action.

It's a feeling akin to finding everything in your house has been stolen --- or, is it finding out your house itself has been stolen.

Either way, I won't rest until these sites are gone, and, if the option exists to prosecute, that's what's going to happen.

Thanks for your post.

 

Well, I got one of the sites suspended in less than 24 hours, something I consider to be a miracle. The other one was hosted on the same hosting service, but they seem to have moved to another hosting service. The WhoIs NameServers have not yet been updated. As soon as they are, I will send the DMCA complaint to that web hosting service.

Nice to know some hosting services have a little common sense and will act when you complain.

Not so sure about Google responding. The clone sites were both using my AdSense publisher ID, something in which I thought Google might take immediate interest. But I have reported the matter to Adsense abuse and also through another Google channel and received no response. Of course, it has not even been 48 hours, so we'll see...

Sometimes it seems no one is at home at Google, or just some robot which responds to any message you send with links to their FAQs pages. Hopefully, my luck will be better with them this time.

 

Result! I guess that's what you wanted

 

Thanks to both of you.

I am looking at the tool Smyrl suggested, but despite a career in IT the really technical aspects of the web is not something I am up on. I will research all the information I am seeing on those pages until I understand it.

APlus.net did take swift action in suspending the site, but they did not suspend the bestworldcountries.com site. Also, the suspension seems to appear and disappear. A new hosting service, HostExcellence.com, has appeared in their name servers in the WhoIs, at least I think it is new. I didn't do a good job of documenting everything the first couple of days.

I get two different IPs for BestWorldCountries.com: 67.15.185.20 (day before yesterday and today) and 216.92.102.21 (yesterday).

My primary worry, of course, is Google. They are using my AdSense publisher ID, and I fear that when the Googlebot eventually crawls this remaining web site, there is a chance it might mistake me for the spammer and drop me from the index. It is, after all, a robot, or that Google might suspend my AdSense account, which would be costly since the site is serving between a quarter and half a million pages a month.

So Google will be my focus in the coming week. I am going to write every single day until I finally get a human to respond...

I filed DMCA complains with both hosting services and Google and a complaint with the FBI Internet Crimes Division.

Really, the FBI is the only one who can put a stop to this. I will run out of time long before these crooks run out of $20 payments for new web hosting services. If in fact they did move to HostExcellence.com, they did it amazingly quickly, as though it were anticipated.

I had hoped this was some dumb kid who thought he could pull it off and would back away once APlus.net suspended the world-and-countries.com account. Now I am beginning to wonder if these are not professional criminals.

I cannot see the previous posts from this screen and am so worn out that I cannot remember if I posted the info about the spam email campaign these people are also conducting. If you look at the "Vacancies" link they have added at the top of the page, they are offering jobs at a fictious company. I suspect the young people who apply for the job will be asked for credit card info to cover an application fee of sometime.

It's really hard to see the design of the scam here since I don't think that way, but there must be one. It took quite a high level of effort to steal all the images, .css stuff, and then hack out the scripted portions of the site they could not support...

 

At least the "why" makes sense now. The guy who originally reported this to me found out about it because someone was using his server to send thousands of spam emails like the one below:

Dear reader,
World & Countries is a Registered USA traveling service company. W&C
offers a very wide range of trips varying in distance, price and
duration. We provide vacation packages for different interests and
budgets. W&C now is actively seeking a Key Account Managers for
part-time position (10-12 hours per week) in Australia.
The position provides support for hot-tours sales department.
Increases the time company's clients can spend on their payment
activities by providing administrative support.
Key Account Manager performs a variety of financial functions
including the checking on the transactions status, trustee to trustee
transfers, opens new accounts with a minimum of errors; communicates
with Sales Team, sends out information as requested.
No special education and experience are required. College degree
preferred. Experience in a financial sphere or bank operations also
preferred. Good English written and verbal communication skills. Basic
computer skills including Word, Excel, and Internet are required.
Please notice that along with your basic fee for each customer after 2
month of employment our managers are provided with travel booking to
exotic countries for 30% of its' real price. Don't miss your chance to
travel during this summer. Contact

--
Sincere regards,

W&C Management

This is leading to a New Zealand bank-mule scam, which can be learned about here: http://www.consumer.org.nz/newsitem.asp?docid=2325&category=Scams&topic=Mule

The thieves never wanted to steal my internet traffic. All they needed was a legitimate looking "store front" to lend credibility to their bank-mule scam.

So far they are getting away with it, complete down to using my real name on their Mission Statement page, which will eventually lead any investigation directly to me.

I'm taken the appropriate steps and notified the proper people, but so far they seem to be getting away with it. Both sites are active again as of a few minutes ago.