Last week, I was attacked by a new kind of pirate -- the cyberspace pirate. While checking one of the keywords on google for one of my most popular gift products, wine glace, when I saw a listing below mine that was worded exactly the same. Clicking on it, I was astonished to see my webpage staring back at me. The name had been changed from shopcreativegifts to shopcreativepresents and the location had been changed from Flagstaff to Phoenix. I clicked through the duplicate site and was even more astonished to discover on the "About Us" page that they were pretending to be me, complete with my photo and company history.
By this time, I was boiling mad. Picked up the phone and dialed the number listed for this Phoenix company to ask if perhaps I had opened a branch without remembering it. The number wasn't a valid number. Called the fax number. Once again, not a valid number, Really curious by now, I checked the Phoenix address and discovered that the zip code used was a Tucson zip code. Digging deeper, I tried to place an order and was even more amazed to see that the orders from this pirated site were still going into my very secure shopping cart. I was really nervous about that and contacted my hosting company. Ken, the owner of precisionweb.net, assured me that there was no way they could compromise my shopping cart.
What were they up to? I posted my findings on several bulletin boards that I frequent and found another company in Oregon that was going through an identical situation. He had traced his pirated site to China and had been unsuccesful getting it removed. Another friend faxed me a copy of an article in the December 2007 issue of INC magazine about a company in Tempe AZ that had his site pirated by a company in India and they were reselling it to others in the United States. Other members of internet tech bulleting boards provided me detailed informaiton about what I needed to do.
The result was "the week from hell." My hosting company owner traced the hosting of the site back to Layered Technologies in Plano Texas. Thank God, it wasn't China or India. I emailed them, called and left messages since no one answered the phone, and got no reply. Finally someone on the bulletin board directed me to a specific letter format that had to be sent. I typed the letter and faxed it off. Finally, I got a reply telling me that one phrase wasn't worded exactly right and I needed to do it again. At least, I breathed a sigh of relief, someone actually sent a reply. I reworded the phrase and faxed it off again.
In the meanwhile, I contacted Internic and filed a complaint about the false information provided when the domain name was registered. I received an email reply that it could take a couple of weeks for a response. I'm still waiting for that reponse.
Since this pirated site was already indexed on google, I filed a DCMA complaint with google, telling them that the whole website was stolen. Got a reply saying, you need to list each page of your site, each page of the pirated site, and provide a description of what was stolen on each page. I have hundreds of pages on my site!
The Flagstaff City Police was the the next stop. Since this website was pretending to be me, I considered it identity theft. Since I couldn't show any financial loss, the police didn't agree but they took the report which I'm sure is sitting in their files somewhere. I do have to admit that I know there are crimes that are more pressing.
Finally, a week after the process began, Layered Technologies suspended the account and took the site off the internet. I can now get back to the business of creating gift baskets for the busiest time of the year in my industry! I still have no idea what their plans were for the pirated site unless they were planning to sell it.
Cyberspace has created wonderful new ways of communication with people around the world. But like many good things in our modern world, there's an evil side as well.
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