DTB content being stolen

[DinoToyForum]

I'm aware that a substantial amount of content from the DTB, including full reviews and photos, are being stolen by other nefarious websites who are reposting it without my permission. The purpose of the theft is to make money by driving traffic to their site, and they even take the affiliate links at the top and bottom of the reviews and replace the code with their own affiliate links.

To help counter this I've installed a plugin to stop website content being easily copied from the front end. So, if you notice you can't copy-paste content any more, this is why.

To protect reviews being scraped from my RSS feeds I've had to change posts in feed to excerpts instead of full reviews. This will affect those who subscribe to the blog via email. Sorry, @ceratopsian, I'm afraid you'll have to visit the blog from now in to see the full reviews, but you'll still get email notifications.

Obviously I'm not going to link to the offending sites, and please don't bother looking for it, because the more views they get the more it will encourage them... It has happened to us in the past and, usually, the sites disappear after a while.

[bmathison1972]

ATB having material being stolen too? Either way, would be good to have a safeguard there as well

[DinoToyForum]

ATB having material being stolen too? Either way, would be good to have a safeguard there as well

I haven't seen any but I'll put in place the safeguards there as well, otherwise it's probably a matter of time.

[ceratopsian]

Thanks @DinoToyForum - I wondered why my last blog email was strangely truncated!  Such thefts are reprehensible.

[DinoToyForum]

Thanks @DinoToyForum - I wondered why my last blog email was strangely truncated!  Such thefts are reprehensible.

  Part of me wants to take action to get the stolen content taken down, but the other part of me doesn't want to give them a moment of my time and knows I haven't really any recourse anyway. So I'll stand back and let them fizzle over time. In the grand scheme of things I don't think it will have any real-world impact on the DTB, but it's surely frustrating.

Also I noticed the last blog was unusually truncated, on the archive page at least, because it ends on the the letter "T." for T. rex. That's because I set the posts to get truncated at the end of a sentence, i.e. immediately after a full stop or other closing mark. So, it thinks T. is the end of a sentence!

[Lynx]

Is this just the images or text, or both? I am quite active on a website where they use photos from DTB (not for reviews or anything) quite frequently.

[DinoToyForum]

Is this just the images or text, or both? I am quite active on a website where they use photos from DTB (not for reviews or anything) quite frequently.

The whole lot, copied wholesale. I'm not talking about Pinterest or anything like that.

[Kapitaenosavrvs]

Is this just the images or text, or both? I am quite active on a website where they use photos from DTB (not for reviews or anything) quite frequently.

The whole lot, copied wholesale. I'm not talking about Pinterest or anything like that.

Oof. Thats bad to hear. I hope it will help a bit to slim down the amout of stolen content. It is interesting how much work goes into stealing and changeing stuff to generate Money from other peoples work and dedication in a HOBBY like this. Disgusting but sadly not surprising.

[DinoToyForum]

Content from the DinoToyBlog continues to be stolen by being scraped and/or hotlinked for other websites, despite my efforts above to stop it. So, I've just taken further action by installing some more security features on the blog. Hopefully this will help put an end to it. The changes shouldn't cause any problems with real users accessing and viewing the blog, but just in case, I'm mentioning it here – let me know if you encounter any problems.

[DinoToyForum]

Content from the DinoToyBlog continues to be stolen by being scraped and/or hotlinked for other websites, despite my efforts above to stop it. So, I've just taken further action by installing some more security features on the blog. Hopefully this will help put an end to it. The changes shouldn't cause any problems with real users accessing and viewing the blog, but just in case, I'm mentioning it here – let me know if you encounter any problems.

It's working! New reviews seem to NOT be appearing on other sites, and previously stolen reviews have the images removed. However an unforeseen consequence that I've just been made aware of: we can no longer hotlink our own images. So, image tags on this forum (which basically hotlinks the images) will no longer work for images hosted on dinotoyblog.com or animaltoyforum.com. This will also break older hotlinked images. It's a price worth paying I guess?