Monday, January 04, 2010

Hotlinking

Until the events at Alien, UFO & the Paranormal Casebook yesterday, I was blissfully unaware of something called "hotlinking." I knew about it in reference to photo files, but I had never realized that someone would or could post your entire blog to their site in that way. The concern there was that it wasn't a blogger site and there would be charges for all the extra bandwidth being used. It is obvious that the person doing it doesn't understand that she is costing someone money, but that is rather besides the point to me. If someone is putting all the work and effort into their site or blog, someone else shouldn't be able to use that at their site without permission. If they want a news blog (or any kind of blog) they should put the time and effort into creating one - not steal an existing one.

Actually this is similar to yesterday's post. What is it about the internet that makes people think they have the right to use other people's work as though it is their own?

90 comments:

Atrueoriginall said...

This is a two part comment

The following are two examples of other websites that are doing what you're talking about in regard to stealing the work of others. Further down is a very simple explanation as to why.

In my case I complained an awful lot with both of these sites to the point of re-posting my complaint in about 50+ comment areas on their sites. They were getting totally sick and tired of me.

My original complaint was that they weren't posting a "link back" for the original website where they took the work from.

After my numerous complaints they started to post my link but you couldn't find the link unless you mouse'd over the page because the "link back" is the same color of the text, which is white.

Only recently one of the two culprits changed the "link back" to orange. Obviously I wasn't done complaining. Just the same, you still have to mouse over the very area where the link is before it turns from white to orange because it's still white.

In my case they were only posting a few words of text and that was it. That didn't matter to me though because I saw where they were stealing full articles belonging to other blogs.

Here are the worst possible scenarios and this is happening to Lon at Phantoms and Monsters and UFO Media Matters. The first one is only one of many, many posts that Lon made and the second is Joe Capp's at UFO Media Matters. After you open this first link, just for fun click on Phantoms and Monsters and see where it takes you. Essentially they're using it as a tag for all of the Phantom's and Monsters posts of Lon's that they've stolen
The Todd Sees Case: Alien Abduction, Murder and Coverup

Now either Lon hasn't seen his numerous posts in that site, hasn't gotten around to doing something about it, or like me, he's is so sick and tired of seeing such that he has to just lets it go.

It's very tiring to have to contact those idiots because there is no contact information and even their message areas do not exist on their Twitters. The only way I have found to contact them is in their comments area on each page and so that's where and I read them the riot act once seeing what I've spent numerous hours assembling sitting in their site. Generally, these are all primarily all out of country blogs or websites that do this.

Now this next one takes the cake. They not only posted Joe's whole post, they even posted the videos that go along with the post. What slays me is the fact that at the bottom of the post they have the gall to thank the original poster even though the original poster never gave them permission and what good does it do to post the original link if they've stolen the whole article? No need to click on the link to visit, you just finished reading the article.

Continue below

Atrueoriginall said...

Lon and Joe should both demand that they take their stuff down when it's been stolen in it's entirety. Those are the rules basically. 250 words only and a link back is the rule of thumb. That's the only way we can get these idiots to stop doing this but unfortunately, nobody sees the big picture like I do. Because nobody complains they know they can get away with it.

Here's the second link on Joe's post.
UFOs And Human Mutilation

Here's the big picture though and why they do what they do. Get X Now has an Alexa Rank in the United States of 142,669. That rank was acquired from October thru December of this year. WOW! They've only had that blog since late September and their rank is already 142,669. So what's the common denominator in all of this? Why are they doing it when they have no interest whatsoever in the UFO community? It's simply one word, AdSense. Period. They're accumulating around 8 pennies a hit on the AdSense ads they have in their sites. Pretty sad isn't it.

Making money off of our hard work and the only thing they have to do is to hook up a feed, sit back and watch it post itself or physically drag their cursor over the original work, hit ctrl C and then ctrl V and their done. All they have to do now is spend the money they make on our work.

Atrueoriginall said...

Who is to blame? Google, plain and simple because they don't have a plan for when this happens but sure love their multi-billion revenue that they're acquiring through AdSense, since it belongs to them.

They DON'T care whatsoever.

LesleyinNM said...

I guarantee you that if that ever happens to this blog in a noticeable way, I will shut down just like you did. I may even move it -- I won't put up with that because I put too much time into this to have some lowlife steal it.

Regan Lee said...

I am so sorry this is happening! Really stinks. Like Lesley, I was ignorant of the depth of "hot linking" I knew it had to do with images, and a sort of vague idea about stealing things in general, but I didn't know the extent of it. Thank you for bringing this out and to everyone's attention -- people need to know, be reminded, be informed.
I've had people just out and out steal my stuff without any credit given, which is bad of course, but when it comes to what you're going through Autrueoriginal, costing you money, that's really the pits.
Too bad there are so many jerks out there.

Atrueoriginall said...

They'll win if you do that. You'll lose because it's like starting over again. Then again, they can just upload the new address where you moved to.

That's why you have to fight them head on.

Here's an update besides the fact that her time has run out. I said noon my time and i12:08CT.

She removed the link from her homepage but, it's still active because I keep checking it so I emailed her again and told her to remove the whole nine yards and not just the homepage link.

I'm so pissed I could scream.

Here's a list of the other sites she's doing the same thing to. She's got BJs UFO Casebook too - that's a big no, no lol

I'm writing him right now about it. He had a Blogger do this to him once - yes, it can be done in Blogger too with the same set up as Word Press.

* ABOUT PARANORMAL ABOUT PARANORMAL BLOG 0
* ACE FOLKLIFE EXPO LINK ACE FOLKLIFE EXPO ORGANIZATION BLOG 0
* ADVENTURE CONFERENCE ADVENTURE CON BLOG 0
* ALL CONFERENCES ALL CONFERENCES WEBSITE 0
* BOB LAZAR ET UFO COMMUNITY Area 51 etc. 0
* Book publishers listed in UNESCO ORG. 0
* Center for UFO Studies ET UFO Resouce 0
* COMMON DREAMS ORGANIZATION NEWS
* CRYPTOZOOLOGY CRYPTOZOOLOGY 0
* DANIKEN ET UFO EXPERT RESOURCE 0
* DISCLOSE TV Natl UFO Center TV ET UFO CENTER 0
* DISCOVER MAGAZINES
* Erick Von Daniken ET UFO COMMUNITY RESOURCE 0
* ET UFO BURLINGTON NEWS ET UFO RESOURCE 0
* International UFO Roswell Museum ET UFO RESOURCE 0
* KEVIN SMITH SHOW – ET UFO PARANORMAL KEVIN SMITH SHOW ET PARANORMAL UFO 0
* MYSTICAL UNIVERSE ET UFO RESOURCE 0
* NATIONAL UFO CENTER ET UFO COMMUNITY RESOURCE 0
* NEW ANIMAL DISCOVERIES NEW CRYPTO 0
* PEOPLE MAGAZINES
* PEREZ HILTON BLOG PEREZ HILTON BLOG 0
* SCIFORUMS SCIENCE FORUMS 0
* SOCIAL PARANORMAL GLOBAL COMMUNITY BOARD FORUM A Forum
* Social Paranormal Wiki SOCIAL PARANORMAL GLOBAL COMMUNITY – WIKI – FOR ALL 0
* Stanton Freidman-Nuclear Physicist Stanton T. Friedman
* STAPLES CENTER LINK FOR TICKETS MICHAEL JACKSON MEMORIAL TICKETS MUST REGISTER HERE 0
* UFO CASEBOOK UFO CASEBOOK RESOURCE 0
* UFO RESOURCE CENTER UFO RESOURCE 0
* UFO SEEK ET UFO RESOURCE 0
* UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES Unexplained Mysteries 0
* US UFO CENTER US UFO CENTER 0
* Whitley Streiber ET UFO COMMUNITY RESOURCE 0
* Zecharia Sitchin ET UFO EXPERT 0

Atrueoriginall said...

Here is the creme de la creme of idiots.

This is how hilarious this can get. Look at what the feed on this website uploaded. lol

IDIOT #1

What a bunch of dweebs. They don't even know what's going up on their site.

For about a week I posted the following text below my big picture that I always post in every blog each day. Read all of the text but in particular, pay attention to the bold text.

IF IT HIT THE INTERNET TODAY, YOU’LL FIND IT BELOW MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2009 Alien, UFO & The Paranormal Casebook is a site that specializes in bringing this very day’s news to it’s visitors as it appears on the Internet each and every day.All text links and picture links are TROJAN & VIRAL SAFE and open to new window. Speaking of such, X News Now and Get X Now are both dangerous viral websites – don’t visit

Now look who picked it up.

IDIOT #2

Like I said, it's a different country and they don't know how to read English and only speak broken English. They just copy/paste. Is that not hilarious or what?

Strange Rob said...

I left this comment at your site Atrueoriginall but I'll repost here to just in case:

Just saw your tweet on all this. Thinking warm thoughts for you and evil thoughts for bloody hotlinkers. LOL

Hopefully your webhost can help you out. They really need to give you a anti-hotlinking remedy. (Like we discussed a few months back) As for stealing your feeds - I don't know what to suggest. RSS is a double edged sword in that respect.

Cheers and hugs to one of my fave ufo/paranormal ladies. :)

Joseph Capp said...

Dear Lesley,
This is a sad state for Atrueorignal it take a great deal of work to do those morning mailings.
I don't know why they are doing this to my blog. I was just doing it to get information out there and ask questions no ones seems to ask. I had no idea I would be a part of these interlopers insanity. I don't really know what you can do unless you get a lawyer. I just hope this clears up for Alien/Paranormal casebook I already miss reading it with my morning coffee.
Joe Capp
UFO Media Matters

Atrueoriginall said...

Hi Rob, the only thing that GoDaddy is doing is showing me how to change my "points to" IP. I went into my Domain Manager (Total DNS Control) and freaked out. That's a scary place, I'm a simple person who only understands html, don't throw this at me. And to make it worse, their explanation as to what to do is written for computer techs and not Joe Blogger.

I'm thinking, oh my what if I screw up, what if it can't be undone. lol

So I'm waiting for GoDaddy to get back to me with that "undone" info right now.

Just the same, It may not remove what is in that other site because it may be that they're asking me to do it for future posts. Meanwhile, over 1500 pages will still be accessible in her site.

AdSenseless said...

the major newspapers avoid this kind of plagiarism by limiting the access to, or content of their RSS feeds.

Syndication feeds should be used as headlines. Ask your hosting provider about controlling the content in your feed. Most of the time it just means editing out a line of code in your blogs RSS xml file.

Bloggers must learn to get control of their feed or delete it altogether. as long as the feed is there, it will be voiolated.

Best of luck to you. This issue is one the internet is dealing with across the board and google's lamb-duck adsense partner revenue program is just a plague on the internet. no good is coming from adsense, just a fat stock price. and some never get rich advetising schemes. sad, really.

Atrueoriginall said...

Actually Joe there are ways. Don't be so nice to those jerks at X News Now or Get X Now. They don't care about you, they just want what belongs to you. They broke in your house and stole something and now they are making money on it in the form of AdSense dollars.

Something we all know is that you're not the tough guy - well, you need to put on a different face when you deal with them. I saw your comment in there to them and it was just to nice. lol That's you though and you have to change that sometimes. GET MAD, GET ANGRY with them and comment on as many blog pages as you can with your comments.

You allowed him to keep that post in there by just saying "don't do it again" when I told you that he was infringing and legally must take it down or change it to 250 words with a link BACK to your website. That's the rules.

And then he responds with the biggest assnine comment I've ever read in my entire life and that is when you should have commented back and said, NO, take it down.

I simply loath the broken English. I'm not positive yet but I think they're from Latvia. I'm still seeking.

Hello dear Joe.

What strange people live around us ???
Yes, of course I mean you ….

I have linkback to your post, with full text and DVD promotion and telephone.
Do you understand what is mean ???

I suppose you are newbie !
Our blog has big visitors audience and it’s great way for you (for your non-commercial blog receive free additional visitors and free advertising of course).

You must learn marketing bases and thank me for free advertising.

Too many strange peoples around us..

Happy New Year and best wishes.
GXN


Did you put that copyright in your blog yet? You have to, it's your gun. Your gun doesn't have bullets but just the same, it's your gun that you need before you can do anything about it.

What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content

LesleyinNM said...

OMG! I can't believe someone had the nerve to write that! You must learn marketing basics (or bases)? Why must you? What an asshole.

Atrueoriginall said...

Love the name AdSenseless - too perfect.

I just got done mentioning that we're Joe Bloggers and not computer people so we're limited as to how we go about everything. And then, when we discover the answers, they're usually Greek - in other words, no comprende.

Now we're having to literally go to a computer guy to do it for us. How silly and embarrassing that is but we have to do it, we're Joe Blogger. Hey dude, nothing wrong with my computer, I'm a blogging nimrod and just don't know how to protect myself. lol
.

Atrueoriginall said...

Oh hell, I especially loved it when he asked Joe if he was a newbie. ROFLMAO

Atrueoriginall said...

I just got an email from BJ, here's some of what he said.

"Yeah, that is really dirty, taking one's whole site. I have had others totally copy my pictures pages verbatim, but never the whole index page. That's sorry as hell."

And he said he was going to write her.

Atrueoriginall said...

Someone tell me please! How could someone do something like that to BJ?

Do you know that he posted one of her articles from the UFO Digest the other day?

Anonymous said...

This is appalling what's happening.

Pharos said...

I think there is a way to make your pictures show up as something else on another page, but I'm not sure how to do it. The only reason I say that is because I've done a Google image search before and clicked on a thumbnail that opened up into a picture with a message saying not to hotlink or steal bandwidth or something like that. I don't know how they made it do that though. I imagine it would be a rather daunting task to have to fix all your images that way though.

I don't know how quickly they pick up your new posts, but if they are getting them rather quickly, You might want to consider making a post linking to a message about stealing bandwidth...but make it look like a normal post, with pictures that appear to be links to articles - but they'd actually all be links to the message about hotlinking. As soon as they picked the post up, you could just delete the faux-post from your blog. If they don't speak good English, they probably wouldn't know the difference...and anyone clicking those links would see the message.

Atrueoriginall said...

But Jeff, it's not a picture on her blogsite only. It's on my blogsite so if I did a no hotlink picture, it would post the same no hotlink picture on my site.

That is my site she has there. The whole nine yards and everything I do is completely mimicked on her site.

Nice thought though. I used to see that when I worked in a forum. Members would take pictures from Unexplained Mysteries, which you do not do and post them in the forum. About a day or two later they would have a picture in place of it stating that it was a hotlinked photo.

Rob just gave me a great idea but I still need to understand how it's done. He said,

"1 way Frames can be busted by placing a snippet of code into the tag.
Eg. onLoad="if (self !=top) top.location=self.location"

Atrueoriginall said...

As far as the second paragraph of your comment, that's what I did.

That big red STOP STEALING MY BANDWIDTH is at the very top of the other sites page. It appeared on the other website simultaneously and it's still there.

Trust me, they speak English perfectly fine. :)

AdSenseless said...

me again, i noticed atrueoriginall's "stop stealing bandwidth" post, this is an excellent approach. you should also make a post that reads somethig like "if you're browser address doesn't read (http://XYZ) then you are viewing this post from an unathorized and illegal web site. Please report abuse to......

you get the idea, then continue to explain the plagiarism to the reader as you've done.

Best of luck, again.

If we can control ourselves on the internet then big brother will be more than happy to help. trust me.

Atrueoriginall said...

Adsenseless, we're dealing with a frame here. The following was suggested.

1 way Frames can be busted by placing a snippet of code into the tag.
Eg. onLoad="if (self !=top) top.location=self.location"

Go Daddy's only suggestion for me was to go into my Domain Manager and change the "points to" IP to my computers IP.

Tell me if you know the answer here - if I did the IP change, or place the snippet of code into the tag, would the existing part of what's in that other site right now still exist and only new posts won't appear?

That's my concern because as it's set up, one can right now go to the bottom of the page and successfully click to the next page, which has another 10 posts and they can do this all the way back to June 2, 2008, which entails 1,565 posts and like I said, more than 25,000 photos.

I haven't yet posted the culprits address here. There are actually two situations going on in these comments. The post in particular has nothing to do with X News Now or Get X Now. It's an entirely different website that is hotlinking me.

I hate to post the address because I don't want people flying in there for more reasons than I can count.

Deirdre said...

Added to my site to help promote awareness.

Sorry to hear about this, Atrueoriginall!

Atrueoriginall said...

Okay, the girls had sufficient time to do something about her website hotlinking but hasn't so here's the skinny.

First of all, I don't want to give you the actual website because then I would be sending many people into it that are just going to be opening up my pictures causing a bigger bandwidth problem but I will tell you who it is now.

It's Theresa Morris, aka: Theresa J. Thurmond Morris.

Yes, the same one who has her stuff posted in the UFO Digest. "cough, cough".

She says in this address below,

"Love People, Spiritual in Nature and Beliefs!"

And boy she's really living up to that nature.

Theresa J. Thurmond Morris

Well everyone, knock yourself out, she's got plenty to read obviously amongst her 31 blogs and I'm not counting her websites.
.

LesleyinNM said...

I would also suggest that if you find the site with all the hotlinking links, don't click on ones that don't seem familiar. I clicked on one and then a news story linked there and it was one of those pages that try to check your hard drive for "spyware."

Atrueoriginall said...

I HATE those. I get them all of the time when surfing because I don't feel that I have enough for my daily posts. lol My bad.

Almost every time I got one it came from a link in Blog Search under the UFO or paranormal tag. They are riddled with them.

I no longer go into Blog Search regularly and if I have to I only click on places I know and not off-the-wall ones.

Its ironic because they're attempting to get you to use their adware,malware,spyware removal tool but yet are doing it in a illegal re-direct fashion. A scary one at that.

For those that don't know, if you ever get what Lesley explained - do nothing - don't touch anything -

just click (alt, ctrl, delete) and your task manager will pop up -

then click on your browser in the task manager and then click "end process".

Reboot. I say this because some browsers will re-open the same sites you had previously opened and closed with your task manager.

Before you reboot, clean your history file, cookies and cache.

It is a shocking thing to see that box pop up in the middle of the screen and it startles you at. I should be used to it but I'm not. As many as I've gotten, I still get that startled feeling when I get one. :)

.

LesleyinNM said...

They freak me out too. This one opened not a new tab, but an entirely new browser window, which made it easy to get rid of -- I just closed that browser. The really irritating thing is even if you click no, it still starts searching you hard drive (or whatever the hell it is doing). Basically anything that hijacks my browser like that I don't trust.

Atrueoriginall said...

I got the ultimate one once. It's the bad boy of virus' and trojans.

I was in my AOL email area back about 2002 when I was on dial-up.

I opened an email, which started to open but then redirected. Suddenly a very legit looking AOL page opened telling me that someone was attempting to upload my files on my computer to theirs.

The page then told me to click here to close AOL immediately - so I did.

That's when they started their download, not upload.

I got what's called a WIN Pro Virus. It is the absolute worse thing you could get back then. Spyware removal programs (that worked) were not available yet so back then you had to have your computer completely swiped clean by a computer tech.

Everything had to go and I had that computer since 1996 so you can just imagine what I lost.

Now I get trojans and virus' all of the time and I absolutely love it because that means that my visitors in my blogs will not get it.

I remove them myself. I have three separate (great) programs that I run when I pick one up.

You always know when you have one - that's for sure. I know my puter very, very well and if it gets sluggish (just slightly) I immediately stop and take a looksee.

In order to keep my visitors from picking up a virus or trojan from the links I post on my blogs, I have even dropped my firewall so that I purposely take in the virus or trojan. Crazy huh? Sometimes you have to do that because you don't always know if the link was viral.

That is the best way to guarantee my visitors that they will not get something like that from my sites since I get it first and fast. I post too many links so I have to.

Consequently, I'm asking for it but that's okay because I can remove them now where as if my visitor got it from my blogs, they would get very angry and that anger would be directed at me.

I haven't updated this in quite a few months but here is a picture (screen print) of past trojans and virus' I've gotten that my visitors ABSOLUTELY would have gotten, had I not opened myself up for such.

June 2008 thru July 2009

Scary way to do it but it's the only way. I use Ad-Adware AE, AVG, Spybot and also HiJackThis if need be.

All of the above sites are absolutely free.

My AVG does most of the work since it's up while I'm surfing. If I'm in Google Search, it checks the links before I open them. Plus it updates itself automatically so I don't have to stop and do that before I run the program.

The others I run 'just because' they do find additional little items like bad cookies and such that AVG didn't have record of yet.

Even with all of that coverage, I'm still going to get virus' and trojans simply because new ones come out every single day that the removal tool doesn't have info on yet in order to remove it. On that note, I'm also very cautious and look at every page I plan on posting a link for. Hinky pages stand out - you recognize them after a while.
.

Rick Phillips said...

Atrueoriginal,

Wow, what crappola.

Wouldn't a boycott of UFO Digest also be in order? Afterall, why would THEY want her to be on their site?

Sickening. Stupid.

thanks for alerting us to who the frauds are.

Rick Phillips

Atrueoriginall said...

No Rick, it doesn't have anything to do with UFO Digest. They're not her.

MARLA said...

I always get my Google Alerts and from there I can see who else has posted links to my columns.

Rick Phillips said...

So, I tried to go to UFO Digest to see if they had any concern about this --- I got this message

"concurrent hits exceeded"

It may not have to do with them directly - but - if I had someone who I allowed to be posted on my site doing it -- they would be OUT.

Atrueoriginall said...

That's a very good idea Marla. It's really the best way because you know the very day it's uploaded by Google. Sometimes simultaneously. I live by Google Alerts << my favorite source.

In Google Alerts I have all of my website addresses, blog and website titles and post titles since I really only use two titles each day for 4 of the blogs.

That's how I found out that Theresa was hotlinking me was through a Google Alert. That just turned my stomach when I saw it.

The title of the Google Alert says (and in bold)

Theresa MORRIS Blog | Alien UFO & The Paranormal Casebook

I spit bullets about then. I thought she had just stolen my blog name and then I went in and about died.

I'm sorry to say this but I'm going to anyway. I've never liked her or what she writes. She brings new meaning to the word kooky and that hurts the whole of ufology. Ya know, sometimes it's best some things are never said because nobody will believe you because they're not you. The only thing they can do is put it in the back of their mind. Well, there are more than not that see it as a deterrent since it's so "out there" that it shys people away from the UFOs entirely and/or if they once believed something they no longer believe anything. And then she makes it worse and mixes in her spirituality/ascension stuff in the soup.

It's just way too far out in left field. When I see new articles in UFO Digest I don't even look at them any more for all of those reasons. I'm actually embarrassed for her when I do read them.

Consequently, when I saw that violet alien face sitting on her blog, which means she's representing ME, I felt like I had a rock in my gut. I was sick. I'm thinking - of all people, give me a friggen break. Ick. Now I'm embarrassed for myself. Sad but true.

I hope I didn't upset anyone by saying those things but I also know that more of you will quietly agree then not.

UPDATE ON THE MESS

BJ wrote me today and said, "Yes, I wrote her a message and sent it to both email addies. I threatened her with legal action."

She won't respond to him, this I know. I've basically done the same and it's obvious to me now that she simply doesn't care what's she's done.

Go Daddy is SOOOOO stupid. I won't even begin and can really only say that they are SOOOOO stupid. We're on email #6 and they still don't understand what I need. lol One of them didn't know what an iframe was. Sheesh!

I have two forum posts in Word Press dot com and dot org both asking for advice. I find forum answers come quicker than websites. There's always a computer geek forum member that likes to help people. That's true for Firefox forum too. I get an answer in under 5 min in Firefox forum.

Atrueoriginall said...

Rick please, don't bother him with this, it's not his business.

He only posts her articles, he's not her keeper.

Atrueoriginall said...

I just now got the following Google Alert, which is the search item that is now sitting in Google Search.

WOOT WOOT

Alien UFO & The Paranormal Casebook: PARANORMAL DAILY NEWS FOR JAN 5, 2010
By Atrueoriginall
Today and the days to follow, you are going to find out the true meaning of - read cat. Today is a very sad day for me since website hotlinker Theresa J. Morris (aka: Theresa J. Thurmond Morris) has not yet pulled down the iframe that ...

I sent it to Theresa just now and in the subject line it reads, "Theresa, you made the paper today"

Aren't I bad! Me bad girl.

Lon Strickler said...

I've been attempting to contact the webmaster on xnewsnow.com for almost a month. I filled out the forms with Wordpress...nothing.

Lon Strickler said...

BTW, I'm coming in late on this....so if anyone has a suggestion for me to help fight this on my site or otherwise, please email me lonstrickler@phantomsandmonsters.com

Atrueoriginall said...

Well Lon, join the club because just like Theresa Morris, she has a Word Press but it's run through Go Daddy. I'm also Go Daddy too but it doesn't mean I'm going to get anything done any faster.

The boys in X News Now and Get X Now have a Word Press just farm them out all over the place. I have a Quick Blog owned by Go Daddy but Go Daddy doesn't own Quick Blog.

You need the registrant information, which is....

X NEWS NOW is.....Protected
http://www.whois.net/whois/xnewsnow.com

That one wouldn't be worth the hassle but at least he's willing to change things where Get X Now won't.

Tell him you want 250 words only and a link back.

He changed it for me.

GET X NOW
Registrant:
Eduard Mikhailovsky - Latvia

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: GETXNEWS.COM

Registrant Contact:
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard Protected
8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 - 732 Westchester, CA 90045 US

The problem child though is Get X Now and you can file with Go Daddy on him. Ask him first to do 250 words and a link back. If he doesn't then threaten him by telling him you're going to file with Go Daddy. That ought to shake him up because many times they think you don't know who it is that's uploading their sites.

Lon Strickler said...

Hi...is there a contact email for this character? If you don't want to publish it, you can send it to my email.

Lon Strickler said...

I just contacted Google and gave them the rundown on this character...the bandwidth theft and spamming.

Atrueoriginall said...

Lon, Google doesn't care. It's not their job to care about those things.

Everything has to be done where the domain was registered. You have to file all of the necessary paperwork. Fun stuff. Not.

Google has nothing to do with it - unless he happens to have a blogger, which he doesn't.

The only thing Google could ever do for you is to pull down specific addresses in Google Search and that's about it. Something that was all of your creation and copyrighted. A lot of what is in your text is not an original creation. Some of it anyway.

MARLA said...

For what I've read, web hosting companies should have a hotlink protection option in the cpanels provided to customers.

I also found this information in one of the forums:

=====================

The code is there to prevent hot-linking only.

Create your .htaccess file on your server (you'll have to do this through a shell connection)

Copy and paste these lines into the .htaccess file:

1) RewriteEngine on

2) RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?domain.com(/)?.*$ [NC]

3) RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp)$ /iamlame.png [R,NC]

4) Of course, replace "domain.com" with your domain name.

5) Create a small PNG file in Photoshop (300x100 pixels) called iamlame.png (or whatever you want to call it) with some basic text: "Stop Stealing Bandwidth" or something similar. When people hotlink your webserver will serve out that image instead of the image they request. The .htaccess file and the PNG image need to be in the same location, this is usually the root of your web content (where you have your index page)

=====================

Atrueoriginall said...

Those are for images only. They've been around a while.

I decided to quit blogging in the UFO, Alien and Paranormal (article blogs) until this is settled. I'm too upset. I can't even think and I'm sure as hell not going to make picture links. Meanwhile, my blog looked pathetic today with just links in it. I couldn't take it.

So, I'm going to probably work solely on taking her site down, my Frontier UFO video blog and my Ghost Hunters Investigation blog and that's it.

So, I just left this message in my Quickblog.

Alien, UFO & The Paranormal

If I can't do pictures because of her I'm not doing my Alien Casebook Fringe or my Paranormal Casebook - The Last 24 either since they're just repeat performances anyway.

Right now, it's just not in me.
.

Atrueoriginall said...

And Marla, she doesn't have just my pictures, she has the whole blog. I'll show you via twitter.

Atrueoriginall said...

I may have oops'd Marla. I assumed you were Marla Pena for some reason. Are you?

Atrueoriginall said...

This is for your visitors. I am exhausted from responding to people emailing me so I put this together. I'm taking it down in a day or two.

My Paranormal, UFO and Alien Blog in an Alien Website - sounds like a horror movie

Deirdre said...

Woah. Wow.

That is seriously fucked up. More than I had imagined.

Atrueoriginall said...

That's why I posted it even though it might cost me. Nobody really gets the full picture because I didn't want them to go in there.

Isn't she the biotch. She won't even return one of my emails. Nothing, nadda, nadda - and I STILL HAVEN'T HEARD BACK FORM GO DADDY lol

Deirdre said...

I'm web designer and I work a lot with GoDaddy accounts. Their hosting may be inexpensive, but their support is complete shite, sadly.

Atrueoriginall said...

I'm in total agreement with you there. It's been a total comedy of errors with them and way too much email tag.

Inexperienced people answer my very, very important questions. I even got up the nerve to state at the top of an email to only allow someone to read it who knows what they're talking about. Then I get a response on it and the person says, so let me get this straight. You want us to take your Quick Blog down for good. LOL

WHAT! My previous question had nothing to do with such a thing. It had to do with doing something another tech at Go Daddy told me to do where you go in the Domain manager and point the IP to my computers IP and not the one that is presently in there. I can't see how that would help so I asked questions and get this yitso brain wanting to know if I wanted to take my Quick Blog down. :)

What's sad here is that there is a source code that you can post and it brakes the frame and redirects the individual back to my address. Huffington Post did it because she's got them in there to. This is what it looks like, check out the action.

Huffington Post at Theresa's Website

Anyway, not like Word Press, in Quick Blog, source codes are restricted. It's a simple little thing and it will solve all my problems in a heart beat. This is what it looks like except that in order for it to post here I had to remove a few pieces.

[body onLoad if (self top) top.location self.location]

But, after three emails with Go Daddy about the source code issue they have not even mentioned it in their return emails. Whatcha do?

I went round-de-round with them before too. There was someone who swiped about 20 pages simply with his mouse and posted them in his website. I got him taken down though. He was flaky to begin with.

Meanwhile, Go Daddy is dragging footsies while I fret.

Lon Strickler said...

I inquired with Google since he is hotlinking and using Google (Blogger) bandwidth through my site. I filed a spam report and they're looking into it...received a confirmation. If they agree with me, they may sandbox him.

Atrueoriginall said...

You mean he's using your pictures?

Deirdre said...

Ah ok - so you're asking if they can implement the code so your site will bust out of frames and not be pulled through hers, since you are not allowed to edit the source in QuickBlog

What I don't get is why that is so hard for GoDaddy to understand.

It may be that the code is not w3c compliant so thats why its not used in Quick Blog. More likely GoDaddy doesn't know what the Hell you're talking about (which is disturbing).

If it can't be resolved have you considered anything else? I haven;t read through all of the posts here, so if this was addressed, forgive me, but I work extensively with WordPress where coding and design are concerned, so if QuickBlog is limiting I could help you switch things over if need be. At least that way you'd have the option to edit your own code.

Atrueoriginall said...

You mean I can switch that blog over to Word Press from Quickblog?

By the way, that frame was created by using a Word Press plugin. Yea, uh huh. lol

Deirdre said...

From what I've been reading, yes. I haven't done it with Quickblog before, but it has been done successfully. You could host WP at the same place (your Godaddy acct) and keep your current casebook intact and live until the import was sorted out. That way you have no down time (if you are back to being posting, once this woman gets her shit together and stops pulling your site thru.

Deirdre said...

I'll look into it further to be sure, if you are interested, and then report back to you.

Atrueoriginall said...

Great! Sounds good.

LesleyinNM said...

I just heard back from Stanton Friedman and he doesn't like his site being hotlinked either.

I also emailed Kevin Smith and haven't heard back.

Stephen Wagner knows about it and apparently has some way to zap it.

Pharos said...

I was just about to say that I emailed Stephen Wagner to see if he knew about it...I figured he might be able to do more about it, considering About.com is owned by the New York Times. They may know how to best handle situations like this.

But then again, if she's also scraping the Huffington Post and getting away with it, About.com might not do that much either.

And I think Interstellar Wife is right...there probably is a way to export the godaddy quickblog and then import it into Wordpress. It might be a little tricky, but there is probably a way to do it. I'm just not sure what it is.

Atrueoriginall said...

I FOUND THE PROBLEM YIPEEEE - JUST HAVEN'T FIXED THE PROBLEM YET.

Here is the problem child. It is a Word Press Plugin called a Bar, which creates a frame so it's not an iframe but yes, it makes a frame.

Here is the creators website

I left him a comment in that site and below is a YouTube that explains how its works

YouTube


I think I can breath a little now because he sounds like a nice enough guy and one whole solve this problem for me. We all know Go Daddy isn't going to. :)

Pharos said...

Did she take the link off her main page? The link still works, but I didn't see it on her main page...am I just overlooking it?

She still needs to delete her version of your page, but if she removed the link to it, I guess that's a little bit of progress...that is, unless I just overlooked the link on her page - if that's the case, just disregard this comment.

Atrueoriginall said...

You like that trick of hers Jeff.

The very day I started emailing her, she locked up her home page and is re-directing to a new page called "Mainpage". That's not her homepage. Her homepage is completely different looking.

There are other pages with that sidebar full of links that she's hotlinking but I'm not on them. She pulled my link down yesterday - but just the link not the page. I want the whole thing down, which means I want the bar down.

This link is her actual homepage but like I said, it re-directs to some funky page. lol There's a sidebar in there though with everybody on it - except me. I scream the loudest, what can I say.
http://www.theresamorris.com

Atrueoriginall said...

And, it's in Google Search so it's still very accessible to surfers.

That Google Search item is on page 2 in #6 position. Thank goodness she's not on page 1 with me or I'd be really angry.

Lon Strickler said...

Yes, he is using my images hotlinked from my blogger site. That's why Google is taking a look at it....

Anonymous said...

dear admin (aka) atrueoriginal,

i've been a regular visitor to your great site for a couple of years now, though had never registered until today.

i was sad to learn that somebody out there has been ripping off your 'hard work' and taking credit for it themselves. ... that's just plain wrong and i can fully understand your being upset about it.

... what can your registered members do to assist you in this?

... petition?
... send a complaint to the guilty party, concerned?
... what?

all the best to you and hoping that this issue can be resolved a.s.a.p. so you can get back to posting on your site, as usual, sometime very soon.

lippy

n.b. I posted this on aileen's site but here seems more appropriate, in hindsight ...

p.s. thanx for the reply aileen and 'sing out' if i can do anything to help! : )

Atrueoriginall said...

Yes, that they'll jump on.

I found a Blogger that was copy/pasting all of BJ Booth's articles and pictures with his Blogger jpgs and bmps and they shut him down in about two maybe three days. Of course it was a serious offense since there were around 500 Blogger pages that were all UFO Casebook

Atrueoriginall said...

lippy, we need more lippy's in the world. Where can we find them?

Atrueoriginall said...

Just a tidbit here. Theresa's site is run through Bluehost and not Go Daddy. Go Daddy is only where she registered her domain.

She wasn't thinking and offered that information to me. lol

She was actually telling me that I should use Bluehost instead of Go Daddy because the bandwidth costs are less.

LOL, I don't have high Go Daddy bandwidth costs. The problem isn't bandwidth costs because that's built into one price with the domain and my Quick Blog.

The concern are penalty costs, which are many times in the hundreds and not pennies. That's how those places make the big bucks.

They never notify you that you're reaching your allocated GB and places like Go Daddy actually deep hole that information so it's not easy to find in your account manager area and you have to literally make many notes on how you finally got to the right page that tells you. You can't even bookmark the page either because you always have to start at the login in an Account Manager area. It's a workout anyway.

Photobucket on the other hand makes it very simple, you just click one button and it tells you how much GB you've used since your roll-over on the next page.

Go Daddy loves it when you go over your allocated MB or GB because that's their bread and butter. Free money, they didn't have to do a thing but wait.

Atrueoriginall said...

This incident is now over with. Theresa's website is down.

Ray Palm (Ray X) said...

Here's my take:

http://xrayer.blogspot.com/2010/01/hotlink-hijacking-i-hate-parasites.htm

Ray

Lon Strickler said...

Theresa Morris emailed me late last night after I read her the riot act and promised that the site links would be removed within 24 hours. Looks like all pressure worked....though, my biggest problem is that jerk in Latvia and XNewsNow.

Deirdre said...

So, was she not getting your emails before, Auto and Lon? Or did she just buckle under the pressure and give in? I'd love to know hat her excuse was for my own amusement =P

But I suppose sleeping dogs must lie. I'm happy to hear that this has blown over (with the exception of Lon's Latvian friend *wink*) I hope you are able to resolve that soon, Lon!

Atrueoriginall said...

I think she buckled under the pressure from the Unexplained Mysteries. He told me that their email probably scared the hell out of her. They were going to start a legal action - hell with a DMCA.

I told her very explicitly that she only had to remove the bar plugin and the iframe. She did the stupidest thing though and put in a ticket to Bluehost asking them how to do it.

They don't care about her Word Press blog problems she's created and they're not they're not Word Press. They probably told her that she needs to look at her Word Press features she's added. She doesn't seem to know how to do that stuff and I think that maybe someone else did it for her previously.

Anyway, she just freaked out is all. Her last email to me was I NUKED MY WEBSITE.

BJ at the UFO Casebook also told her that he would be taking legal action.

She said, "the only thing I did was post your link in my sidebar". Well, her sidebar was set up to frame everyone. I'm sure she checked her work and saw that she had the whole website in there so she has no excuses

Speaking of which, I didn't want to mention this just yet with all that was going on because first I knew this would all be a learning experience but, did you know that Blog Catalog has framed all of our websites?

I put a message into them some time ago and haven't gotten a response back yet so I'm getting ready to delete my account.

Those damn iframes are really going to pose a big problem down the road for us all.

Welp, I have to post my UFO bloggie right now saw talk later.

Atrueoriginall said...

Actually, I was going to say something earlier but Lesley said something about removing her blog altogether if it happened to her and I thought, I don't think it's a good time to tell them that yet. lol

Lesley, they'll handle it eventually so don't worry. And besides, you have the power to remove your site from their site so it would automatically come down if need be.

Deirdre said...

Hrm.

I wonder if thats mentioned in the Blog Catalog TOS. I admittedly just glanced over it when I submitted my site to it. I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the head's up!

Also, I'm very happy this one situation has been resolved for you!

Anonymous said...

Atrueoriginall is very stupid person.
You have computer from 1996 but do not know what mean HOTLINKING
Please look on wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_link

You're mostly right but many arguments are lie.

Mentioned by you 2 blogs never "horlinked" your own blog content. They always reposted ONLY 1-2 sentences from your everyday articles. They never hotlinked your banners and images.
But ... They always (without your requests !!!) placed at the end of every reposted article backlink to your and other blogs.

If you fight for truth why you so much lie ???

Atrueoriginall said...

Oh dear anomymous - all arguments are documented so don't go there. Actually my first computer was a 1987 Apple MacIntosh so I've been doing this for 23 years, not 13.

I was in that comment talking about my Hewlett Packard 1997 Windows computer.

In your Wiki, the first item on the list is this - "Inline linking"

That's what she was doing. She was using an iframe. The "i" in iframe is the word INLINE. Word Press calls it iframe to make it look like something that belongs to Apple or something like that.

Hanging on Apples coat tails anyway with the letter "i".

So yes, she was hotlinking by using an inline link.

Is there anything else you would like to input so that you can make yourself look like a bigger idiot. :)

Atrueoriginall said...

And one last thing anonymous, read this whole page before you say anything else because the same darn Wiki link you posted, I post in here previously.

Anonymous said...

No problem Atrueoriginall.

I said many words about your lie but you answered me about hotlinking.
Please read about your favorite term again http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html

You must answer for your lie because mentioned X blogs never hotlinked your images. Please read my previous comment where you can read another true facts...

Why X owners reposted your stupid warnings ??? Because they use autoposters without human monitoring :)

I has not computer from 1996 year but know how work modern wordpress plugins.

Best regards

Atrueoriginall said...

Well anonymous, I don't lies you were talking about. Could you maybe type them out and number them so I don't miss them because I don't lie and I sure as hell haven't lied here.

And maybe you might want to tell everyone who you are since most that comment anonymously do so because they're just venting and don't want anyone to know who they are.

Atrueoriginall said...

As far as the hotlinking goes, I don't need to be told that she was violating in so many ways because there were about 30 different sites emailing her to take those links down, I was only one of them.

She was inundated with everything including three who were going to take legal action.

Blame the Unexplained Mysteries if you want. They wrote me today and said that they thought that she NUKED her site because their email to her was very strong. It was probably from their attorney.

Unexplained Mysteries is bigger than a bread box, you don't screw with them.

Did you also know that she had People Magazine and Perez Hilton framed as well.

See, I'm the little guy here. Go scream at them because I'm sure it was their horsepower that scared the ever livin hell out of her. If I was her I would have deleted my website too. lol

Atrueoriginall said...

The reason you're not finding the stuff on Idiot #1 and Idiot #2 is because they deleted the text.

Now I can call them Bigger Idiot #1 and Bigger Idiot #2 because they actually just deleted the info in the page. Look at the browser anonymous. The title is still in there and they're my titles. lol

Idiot #1

Idiot #2

So load your guns before you post again because you're now Idiot #3.

Actually I already think you're from Get X Now due to your poor English and spelling. It's similar to Get X Now's so you're officially Idiot #2.5 lol.
.

LesleyinNM said...

I assume I could get blog catalog to stop that by deleting my membership. I will check it out later, for some reason that doesn't bother me as much. Obviously people must know that blogs at blog catalog belong to the members and not blog catalog.

Anonymous said...

Atrueoriginall - #4

Lon Strickler said...

Thanks for the heads up on Blog Catalog. I closed it out. If you notice anything else, LMK. Lon

Atrueoriginall said...

Whatsamatter anonomous, can't deny my comment and so you call me #4 or you're angry because I'm right so you call me #4.

ROFLMAO

See, I knew you were the nimrod from Get X News.

Lon Strickler said...

Hey Anonymous....this is Lon Strickler from "Phantoms and Monsters". You've been stealing from me since July 2009. I want all that hotlink content (images and text) taken of XNewsNow...immediately. I'm going to be civilized for now....but I will find your Latvian ass if need be. Don't come on here and act innocent.

Atrueoriginall said...

Get X News dude, I see some of the confusion here. You didn't read the whole page before posting. My hotlinker problem was someone named Theresa Morris who had installed an iframe on her website.

That was the hotlinker, not you. Not in my case anyway. You're just thieves plain and simple.

You're only allowed 250 words and a link back and that's it but you steal whole articles, like Lons and Joe Capps and other people I don't know personally, you can't do that, it's against the rules.

Now just because you don't live in the U.S. doesn't mean those aren't your rules because they are. Those rules are set for the Internet no matter what country you live in.

I had a Blogger taken down about 6 months ago because he did to me what you're doing to Lon and Joe. Lon can have you taken down in a heartbeat. Alls he has to do is show Blogger an original article of his (of his creation), which is dated material and then show them your page with that article in it.

You are only allowed snippets of 250 words and even those rules will be changing too soon

Link backs make no never mind - they're after the fact because you took way more than you were allowed to and who in the hell is going to click on a link when they just got done reading the article at your place? Nobody idiot #3.5 lol

I'm waiting for you to screw with me in that regard because I'll pull your website down faster than you can spit.

I'm by no means complacent. When I see an injustice I stop what I'm doing and I start working on THAT injustice and nothing more until I'm satisfied or have started some kind of ball rolling in their direction.

It's bad enough that you post my links and snippet.

Honestly, and I am very truthful when I sayd this - I'm embarrassed when you do that. I don't want to be represented by a website that steals other peoples creations. You're a thief, so you can see how it turns my stomach to see - Alien, UFO & The Paranormal Casebook for Dec 31 in my Google Alerts - then click the link and it's YOU!.

Oh shoot, I forgot again - you're out of country so you don't give a sheet about us - Well duh! we know that but we have muscle from idiots like you.

Atrueoriginall said...

A rewrite of last sentence above: Excuse me, we have muscle for idiots like you. We have the power to take you down.