Splog Spot Blog » Plagiarism

Protect Your Blog Content

noemi — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:57:42 +0000

Don’t you just hate it when you spend hours on a blog post only to see the exact same content in another site? It takes you a long time to come up with a particular topic or idea, a little bit more to put the bits and pieces together, and then some more to actually write out the post. And, just like that, someone thinks he/she can take your content – live off your hard work!

It is thus no surprise that various sectors – and individuals as well – have made it their mission to help bring down splogs (including us). This endeavor also means taking certain steps on your part to ensure that your blog content is protected to a certain degree. After all, if sploggers were to have a harder time stealing content, they just might give it up.

What can you do to make it hard for sploggers to steal your content?

Plugins

There are many plugins that you can utilize to make it harder for sploggers to steal your content. They work in various ways, the end goal being the same: to protect your content. Some plug ins work by disabling functions that will allow the text to be manually copied. Others work by feeding bots fake content when they try to steal the content. Take a look around and see what you can use to protect your posts.

Data service centers/Web hosting services

You may not think about it, but your web hosting company might play a role in the security of your data. After all, the information that you post in your blog will be stored in the data center used by your web host. If they have security issues, sploggers may be the least of your worries. What can you do? Make sure that you choose the right web hosting company – one that will ensure the security of your data.

Splogs and plagiarism

Jon — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:04:31 +0000

For the longest time, the issue of plagiarism was seen as only occurring within the province of the academia. Copying and stealing another person’s work is only a problem in colleges and universities, and of course the occasional seedy journalist. The internet was pure and pristine. No one would dare steal someone’s work and then pass it off as their own. Of course, we all know that the internet is now the primary battleground for plagiarists and the hard-working people who actually write original content. More and more people are seeing plagiarism as a growing problem but, unfortunately, many also think that there’s nothing anyone can do to combat this crime.

But there are actually many things that a person can do to help combat plagiarism. There are many kinds of recourse they can take in order to curb this intellectual theft of original content that is being used for splogs and other dubious endeavors online. The first thing that should be done is to become vigilant. As holders of original content, a person must always be aware about the threat of plagiarism.

The Link Splog

Jon — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:15:51 +0000

I’ve written before about how feeds are being used by people who make splogs. They are using RSS feeds as well as the power of search engines to look for specific content that can be used to popular the blog. The usual form this content takes are link lists or excerpts of the article or content along with links that usually point to other content that often have just enough correct keywords to lead search engines to it.

In a link splog links that number from a single one to a dozen that are related to the articles are posted everyday. The attempt is to make it look like it’s a “links of the day list” but a deeper investigation into the lists will show that the links don’t add up. Some of the links will usually point to non-related content, this indicates that the link list was chosen without rhyme or reason — usually automated by a piece of software.

Fair Syndication – On the Right Track?

Jon — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:27:38 +0000

The advent and rise of the splogs has triggered a debate between bloggers, the online ads industry and the Fair Syndication Consortium that debates the situation whether ad companies should remunerate web sites that use stolen content. The opposing parties has people on both sides raising their own points, on the side of the bloggers content should be guarded and deemed as personal property, on the side of the consortium they say that they are fighting for the said right, getting these splog sites to get their claimed earnings from ads but steering some of the profits down the line to the bloggers who were responsible for the blog posts.
Very much a blurred line exists between the grounds by which they stand, and being sponsored by many big businesses and other major players the consortium is indeed raising a very real fact, splogs are here and there is no sure way to combat them or prevent them from plagiarizing content from other sites, kinda goes to the tune of “If you can;t beat them, Join them!”. The bloggers and several thousand writers are still trying to obtain ways of shutting down these splogging sites but as mentioned, there are ways by which you can indeed profit from these sites but the line is thin and you can end up losing more that you hope to gain. The debate is detailed in the following post from TechCrunch where more details are brought to light.

Why They Can’t be Stopped

Jon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:36:10 +0000

The scourge of the Splogs and their Splogging creators are truly nagging each and every blogger on the planet yet there is a specific fact that bloggers have pointed out, why there is not much in terms of tools or utilities/plugins that can stop these bots? That is a question we’d have to press and keeping silence is like telling these guys that they can get away with what they’re doing. Spamming plugins like Akismet abound yet there are not much available for controlling the stealing actions of these programs. We’d have to ask the many WordPress developers out in the wild of the internet that question or maybe they are already doing something about it and are about to do so in the near future. Most bloggers are forced to do the unthinkable, kill their blogs and start anew with the plugins they find that nips the bud before it opens.
But killing a blog isn’t always the best option for established blogs, random blogs and anything in between are being hit again and again. The action would also bolster the ego’s of these darned crooks and fighting back may be the best course of action. Reporting the sploggers to Google is one option with it’s adsense system that ranks blogs and content accordingly. That way, they can kill these bots, shutting them down permanently. The downside, is that like the rest of malware out in the wild, they seem to be adapting as fast as controls are put in place. A simple relocation or use of the millions of IP addresses tends to leave these plugins in the dust catching up when they smell the stink and so on and so forth. More on the scourge of blogs in the coming posts, blog safe and keep safe.

Splog Mechanics

Jon — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:35:12 +0000

We all know of the situation, you work hard researching a blog post and you get it out to the most people possible through the many publishing methods on the web making your content work for you. Then you notice that your very much colorful blog is losing authority and find that your RSS feeds are being tapped by unknown people stealing your content and claiming them as their own getting the exposure you should have been and not even giving you any credit for it. Call it copy/paste, plagiarism and even plagiarism but stealing is stealing yet with the problem out in the open, why hasn’t anybody thought of a way to seek these sites and shut them down? Even the many a brilliant minds out there on the net have admitted again and again that the net is too vast a territory to police and such activities are too random and predictable at the same time that there is no specific way to root them out.
One method employed by established bloggers is to use an AntiLeech plug-in which creates a fake blog post for them to lock onto, at the same time obtaining their IP Addresses and blocking further attempts by these crazy bots from stealing further content. It also works by setting up the fake blogs with a link-back that links back to your site that can be annoying to the splogger. There is a problem though, any content already stolen is not recoverable and as fast as it does it’s work to prevent the act, the bot adapts and changes IP address again getting hold of more of your precious posts. The fake posts look legit enough to trap these splogging bots yet they are reacting seemingly as if preempting such actions. More in the coming posts on how these nuisance programs work and how we can fight back.

Splogs on Your Blogs – Kicking Back

Jon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:55:20 +0000

Splogs are blogs that use your content without permission, posts them onto their sites for profits without even giving you a mention or credit for what they’ve done. They do get away with it and in the process they earn in terms of traffic to their sites thus increasing their profits. Most experts suggest kicking back by adding a simple plugin called RSS Footer that comes from Ytoast.com which allows you to automatically add an extra line of content to your feed that automatically places a footer that say’s “Post From :” with a link to your blog along with your blog’s name. Splogs are simple copy/paste artists who leach traffic from your site to theirs thus getting traffic that should have been yours.
People on the WordPress forums suggest that you rename the wp-signup.php file which they say is quite effective at stopping them dead in their tracks. Most others have implemented simple yet effective re-CAPTCHA implementation which can be obtained from their site. This seems to be a very effective screen for botnets who automatically prey on your blogs, relying on human vision and interpretation for a security measure that seems to defy current computer technology. But the easiest way seems to be re-naming the sign-up scripts which is being implemented by most bloggers and admins alike. Opinions differ on the best approach so do keep tabs on future posts for new and improved ways to battle the menace that are splogs.