Forum Moderators: martinibuster
However, when you click on any of our links such as www.mysite.com/directory/file.htm on that thief's domain, what shows up in the browser is still the main domain www.thief.com
I'm not sure exactly how to call this type of hijacking, as they didn't seem to download our site but just running a script. I discovered it because our Adsense impressions increased significantly yesterday though none of the channels were reporting any big changes. Then I looked at Google Analytics and saw a new site directing big traffic to us. I checked it out and saw our pages in that domain.
To protect our Adsense, I have already:
1. Filed a DMCA complaint to the web host and domain registrar
2. Listed all our sites in the Adsense Allowed Sites section, which I never used before
3. Contacted Google Adsense about unusual activity and asking them to remove all clicks and impressions coming from the thief's site
Is there anything else I can do to protect my Adsense (and my site as well)? I can't really understand the motivation as they did not change anything on our site -- e.g. didn't replace our ads with their ads or anything. Our site is about 6,000 pages of static HTML.
Thanks for your help
P.S. Hmmm .. I filled up the Adsense contact form for invalid activity on the Adsense site and I got a Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
I'm not sure exactly how to call this type of hijacking, as they didn't seem to download our site but just running a script.
Surely this can be done from their registrars control panel where they can point their name at any site, retain their domain name all the time but simply change the meta details?
I can't understand why they would want to do that other than wonder if they have made a mistake and pointed it at the incorrect site?
"I looked at Google Analytics and saw a new site directing big traffic to us"
I guess they copied your analytics code also
I was just perplexed to see a huge jump in my Adsense impressions yesterday but cannot find any increases in the impressions from any of our channels.
This is not the first time someone used our site. But others before have downloaded all our content and site design (unpolished it may be), and replaced our name with their name. This is the first for this type of abuse.
And I'm not happy that the form I used in the Google Adsense website to report the invalid activity came back to me as undeliverable. Time to contact the reps.
It's scary that someone will want to use a domain and point that domain to our site, and use blast traffic to promote it.
I hope your solution turns out to be as simple.
Good luck
The domain registrar's legal dept already responded to say that while they are indeed the domain registrar, I need to contact the web host. Grrr....
Thanks Astrobiologist. It is a pain indeed.
Is there anything else I can do to protect my Adsense (and my site as well)?
Yes, go to AdSense Setup -> Allowed Sites and provide a list of your domains and the other domain will be rejected by AdSense and no longer impact your reporting.
Another site is running a script to show our pages on their domain. Any update on our site is immediately reflected on that domain. They only changed the metatag in their site -- but the logo, our site's name, everything is still in that thief's site
This may be a simple DNS hijacking, except the meta tag you mentioned, which can be easily fixed if it's only a DNS hijacking.
Anyone can aim their dns entry at your server's IP and assuming you have more than one domain on the server it will only resolve to the first domain on that server.
Adding this to your .htaccess file should help this problem:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(example\.com)?$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
This will stop any dns hijacking of your site in the search engines or otherwise as Apache will redirect anything that isn't your domain name back to your actual domain name.
But with an added twist -- when you go to the domain of the thief showing our website, there's an audio announcing business opportunity. We're a leading information site in that space (not bizopp, but the more general field).
Firefox shows that they are framing our site.
It was not there this morning. So they may have added it today and using our site to market their bizopp.
But it is scary that other sites who wants to promote their bizopps will hijack another site to give them credibility!
I would file some DMCA complaints
That would be a bad idea since all they are doing is framing the OP's site.
Allowed Sites and provide a list of your domains and the other domain will be rejected by AdSense
That wouldn't work either. The framed site is still the OP's and would be allowed.
I added a frame busting script to my site. Going to the pest's domain now goes straight to our domain. Whew!
Causes an endless redirect error
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !example\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
