Audioholics Content Stolen by Fake Website MTXaudioseries.com

gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
Guys;

We noticed a drop in our SEO presence since last year for the editorial site but NOT the forum. This was odd b/c the Audioholics.com editorial site has always dominated our industry for SEO.

Well Clint discovered today that someone setup a fake website that apparently is a domain forwarder for our content:
http://mtxaudioseries.com/

Sadly they copied our entire site map and it indexed in Google.

I contacted MTX Audio and they do NOT own this domain. I think this may be a deliberate attack from a 3rd party that is taking advantage of our site popularity to drive up their own SEO.

We issued a DMCA to Go Daddy where the site is registered and also contacted the FBI.

If anyone has suggestions on preventative measures for this occur ring in the future, we are all ears.

See screenshots below:

audioholics.jpgmtxaudioseries.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
I believe I got linked to that site while searching for something speaker related on google not too long ago... I noticed the URL was wrong so I closed it and went directly to AH since the article I wanted was here, but didn't realize it was actually a copy cat. Bastards
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
I don't think you could do anything to prevent this other than putting paywall ... Not that me or any other active member would really like it. Or atleast require free registration to read the content. This is not stop, but should slow them down a bit
See the fight between Oatmeal and FunnyJunk - The Oatmeal and FunnyJunk legal dispute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Site itself hosted by scalabledns.com (Go Daddy just host the domain name, not site itself) - see their contact below.


Comment: Please send all Abuse, Trademark, Comment: Legal Compliance, and Law Enforcement Comment: requests to abuse@scalabledns.com

Owner of the domain is :
Lee, Carol usernokia@hotmail.com 9245 Alpine Ave Sparta, MI 49345 United States +1.6162631490
 
Last edited by a moderator:
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
I ran into something very similar yesterday when looking for some tire info - multiple sites containing basically the exact same thing, that obviously one had copied from the other with different images. The site wasn't copied, but one or more of the sites clearly plagiarized one of the others.
 
gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
I ran into something very similar yesterday when looking for some tire info - multiple sites containing basically the exact same thing, that obviously one had copied from the other with different images. The site wasn't copied, but one or more of the sites clearly plagiarized one of the others.
What this party did to us is a lot more damaging. They are sucking our SEO away from us. I want to crack some skulls.
 
jinjuku

jinjuku

Moderator
First thing that you will have to start doing is a keyword notification with each of your articles and then setup google notification when those key word/phrases get used. This way you are alerted when it pops up else where. We found one of our competitors did this and used all our verbiage word for word. Needless to say our Attorney was the first one to make contact with them.

Keep in mind that cracking skulls is going to be done most likely in Federal court. Do you have a TOS that has a jurisdiction clause? This will save you the B.S. of having to argue about venue. Every article they lifted is a commercial copyright infringement. $150K per pop.
 
jinjuku

jinjuku

Moderator
# The following results may also be obtained via:
# http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=192.157.254.140?showDetails=true&showARIN=false&ext=netref2
#

NetRange: 192.157.192.0 - 192.157.255.255
CIDR: 192.157.192.0/18
OriginAS: AS18978
NetName: ENZUINC-US-BLK9
NetHandle: NET-192-157-192-0-1
Parent: NET-192-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
Comment: --------------------------------
Comment: Enzu Inc.
Comment: 2360 Corporate Circle Suite 400
Comment: Henderson, NV 89074
Comment: https://www.enzu.com
Comment: --------------------------------
Comment: Please send all Abuse, Trademark, Legal Compliance, and Law Enforcement requests to abuse@scalabledns.com
RegDate: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-192-157-192-0-1


OrgName: Enzu Inc
OrgId: ENZUI
Address: 2360 Corporate Circle
Address: Suite 400
City: Henderson
StateProv: NV
PostalCode: 89074
Country: US
RegDate: 2010-02-24
Updated: 2012-04-25
Comment: --------------------------------
Comment: Enzu Inc.
Comment: 2360 Corporate Circle Suite 400
Comment: Henderson, NV 89074
Comment: https://www.enzu.com
Comment: --------------------------------
Comment: Please send all Abuse, Trademark,
Comment: Legal Compliance, and Law Enforcement
Comment: requests to abuse@scalabledns.com
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/ENZUI

ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.scalabledns.com:4321

OrgNOCHandle: NETWO3674-ARIN
OrgNOCName: Network Operations
OrgNOCPhone:
+1-702-965-1615
OrgNOCEmail: admin@scalabledns.com
OrgNOCRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NETWO3674-ARIN

OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE2868-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone:
+1-702-965-1615
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@scalabledns.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ABUSE2868-ARIN

OrgTechHandle: NETWO3674-ARIN
OrgTechName: Network Operations
OrgTechPhone:
+1-702-965-1615
OrgTechEmail: admin@scalabledns.com
OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NETWO3674-ARIN

RAbuseHandle: ABUSE2868-ARIN
RAbuseName: Abuse
RAbusePhone:
+1-702-965-1615
RAbuseEmail: abuse@scalabledns.com
RAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ABUSE2868-ARIN

RTechHandle: NMR3-ARIN
RTechName: Rose, Nicholas Michael
RTechPhone:
+1-317-442-5605
RTechEmail: admin@scalabledns.com
RTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NMR3-ARIN

RNOCHandle: NETWO3674-ARIN
RNOCName: Network Operations
RNOCPhone:
+1-702-965-1615
RNOCEmail: admin@scalabledns.com
RNOCRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NETWO3674-ARIN

#
# ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use
# available at: https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html
#</pre>
 
jinjuku

jinjuku

Moderator
Interesting that they aren't in the internet wayback machine. You have to purposefully use a robots.txt file to keep your site from being crawled.
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
Interesting that they aren't in the internet wayback machine. You have to purposefully use a robots.txt file to keep your site from being crawled.
Or they just too new or too small for wayback crawler.... They wont use robots.txt since they want to steal seo traffic
 
gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
First send an email to abuse@scalabledns.com They should go into DNS and redirect the record to a standard take down page.
Thanks I did so but they haven't responded. Go Daddy told me I need to provide written proof of Audioholics.com domain ownership along with trademark/copyright policies. Working on that now.
 
jinjuku

jinjuku

Moderator
LOL. Man these fockers are brazen to say the least. Another call to their web-host is in order.

Did you get this via the Google Alert at least?
 
gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
LOL. Man these fockers are brazen to say the least. Another call to their web-host is in order.

Did you get this via the Google Alert at least?
I think Cliff found it using a site called copycat or something. We are busting our asses trying to fix SEO issues only to be getting sucked dry by these bastards. What is worse is we had to shut down some of our client banners b/c they are spoofing IP addresses and crashing their site. So now we are loosing revenues not just traffic.
 
Adam

Adam

Audioholic Jedi
I think this may be a deliberate attack from a 3rd party that is taking advantage of our site popularity to drive up their own SEO.
I gotta say, I find it pretty funny that a spammer is copying part of Gene's original post in this thread. :D
 

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