Stolen Website

[ssecor39]

Hi Striddy,

Yes it does! Funny now the isp block is lifted and we can get to www.hostveteran.com. The previous response from Host Veteran states that they went to archive.com and its showing that our site was up first. First of all, that site goes to a generic site that is a portal. Secondly, www.archive.org it the correct site and we don't have history on our site for 2008 yet from there as it has not published it to the archives. Host Veteran has no history whatsoever.

[randy]

Good thought using the way back machine. It is funny to look back at some of our designs.

I get

http://www.hostveteran.com/

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/2.2.10 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.10 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.hostveteran.com Port 80

[Zorro67]

Also, being able to identify the name of the person you need to speak to is a good idea. I might be that the business owner, knows nothing about what a supplier or employee might have done.

Glad to see that the owner of HV was prepeared play ball. It certainly pays not to go off half cocked and assume it was his mess.

If he does manage to get his money back, rememeber that he'll also be looking for a new designer that will provide him a good product (hopefully at a good price). He's already familiar with the quality of your work

[DeanClinton]

The link works outside of this site... it looks like another one blocking referrals from this site.
By works, I mean displays a splash page.. looks like they may be willing to play ball.


Besides, look at the link below their main site... http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...veteran.com%2F

But, upon digging deeper, it looks like everything's still there - the sub pages are still live with the layout, as is the forum.

[DeanClinton]

HostBrella have now ripped from ASmallOrange...

http://www.hostbrella.com/images/menu-hosting.png
http://www.hostbrella.com/images/hbox-super.png
http://www.hostbrella.com/images/hbox-large.png

[redrat]

I'm glad that things are now starting to swing in your favour Scott and hope you are able to put a stop to this soon. I certainly appreciate the way you have gone about dealing with this matter and am learning accordingly, for which my thanks.

[bear]

Nice find, Dean. Seems they are the thieves after all, and the mysterious "designer" is a bunch of BS. The ASO rip even has missing pages for things they didn't steal like "products", "support" and "contact".

I let ASO know, and I hope this time they go after the upstream provider. Thieves shouldn't be allowed to stay on line.

[sparky]

Just in case someone has missed or doesn't know about the .htaccess to protect files.
This is what I use in the public_html directory
Protects configuration.php, all .txt (lang files) and all .tpl
as well as turning off directory browsing

# protect configuration.php
<files configuration.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?tshosting.com.au [NC]
RewriteRule \.(txt|tpl)$ - [NC,F,L]

# disable the server signature
ServerSignature Off

# disable directory browsing
Options All -Indexes

[ssecor39]

Good Morning to all,

The past few days has been a whirlwind of activity bringing much needed attention to the growing problem of website piracy. Having been a recent victim of website theft, its time to band together and at least get the word out to the masses. Our goal is to put our collective heads together and provide information and steps to resolve this ever growing problem. We are asking for collective thoughts and ideas for our new website entitled www.nomorerip.com

This site will be an advocacy for website piracy and outlet for small business owners like yourselves to share preventive measures and to track and report website theft out in the wild.

Please join us in making the internet a much more genuine and unique place to share out talents and works.

[AndrewMKP]

Just in case someone has missed or doesn't know about the .htaccess to protect files.
This is what I use in the public_html directory
Protects configuration.php, all .txt (lang files) and all .tpl
as well as turning off directory browsing

Sparky, will this affect robots/spyders/archive robots?

i don't think it will but will probably be adding this code in, just need to ensure it doesn't block the above, if it does of which aspects.

Regards

[VicToMeyeZR]

Here is my question?
http://www.hostveteran.com/clients/index.php

y'all still gave them a license for you product after *all this talk of theft? or did they rip this to?

[DeanClinton]

Hi Bear,
It's amazing how this HostBrella keep getting away with it... they definately need shutting down - I'd already put in a ticked with ASO the minute I found it.

Remember guys, there are two sites mentioned within this thread - HV and HB - HV have so far been co-operative with the original poster, HB have taken it down and then stolen another...

Ideas for nomorerip? A place where people can submit sites that have stolen the layout - an admin could then verify the theft, alert the website and if no response to the allegation would be named and shamed on the site - helping to destroy their google PR by duplicating parts of their sites on nomorerip (duplicate content and all).

MWAHAHAH :p

[ssecor39]

Hello to all,

We are getting www.nomorerip.com setup and ready for content. We will keep everyone informed when its ready to go live.

Thank you everyone for all your valued support and feedback on this.

[andrewboring]

Thanks to those who notified A Small Orange of the infringement. I have sent a DMCA Takedown Notice to Carohosting.com, who is providing the service to hostbrella.com.

[ssecor39]

Hi Andrewboring,

That is great news indeed! Let's hope they get Host Brella to take down their site ASAP!

Its action like this that will help deter this trend of thieves from gaining more ground in the future.