Cathy from Cathy's Rants and Ramblings blog has been hijacked. Cathy tells me that she had deleted her blog and immediately once she had done that someone took her address and is posting ads on her blog using her blog address...this person(s) has even kept old posts that she has made and some of her blogroll. I am not sure of their motivation behind this but please don't go there.
Here is an excerpt from the email Cathy sent me......
"Hi, yes my blog has been hi-jacked again! Mary Anne, I am sick to death over this and I dont know what to do about it..I had closed and deleted my blog because it was stolen and placed on a blogtastic site. Then within 24 hours of closing it, it was hi-jacked again,and this guy BIEL, is using it for ad's....I have written to both blogger and google...."
Cathy has asked me if I would make a post on my blog and let you all know what has happened. I know there are some of you who visit my blog as well as hers. So this is just a notice to let you all know. I have told Cathy she can make a post on my blog to let you all know what is going on.
Urgh!!! Some people's kids, I tell ya!!! That really burns my Twizzlers!!!
15 comments:
Thank you mary anne for posting this. Just to give a little more information, I had posted last week that i would be closing my blog, because parts of it were stolen and placed on blogtastic. It took me several weeks of emails and finally blogtastic responded, by removing the stolen posts, and eventauly closed down that blog.
I can only guess that whoever did that, has also been reading at my blog, and knew i was about to close it.
I closed it on Saturday and then deleted it on Sunday. later that same day, the address and some of my posts, along with part of my links had been hi-jacked and the blog was once again opened. They initially opened it back up, with my exact name of "Cathy's Rants and Ramblin's" In the last 24 hrs they have changed it now to just "CATHY".
It is a person who calls himself "Biel". Sounds like a redneck version of Bill, to me. His purpose, obviously, is for financial gain from AD's. The site is full of google AD's.
If you go there, please do not click on any of the Ads, as this thief will get money from every ad that is clicked. I have asked him to close the blog down and he has ignored me. I have sent emails to google and blogger, and it seems it will be challenging to get any help in that direction.
They have asked me to snailmail them the exact copywrites from the stolen posts. A problem with that, is I have deleted the blog, so where could I possibly get the exact (original) posts from? I do have some things in mind and some people working on helping me in that area.
"Biel" has copied and pasted the posts back on showing new dates (yesterday and today) as the copywrite dates, so doing what they ask is a problem.
Many of these AD places, pay you based on several different ratings. One is technorati and one is Alexa. I had very good ratings from both of those places so it would benefit a thief to immediately take over an address with a high rating system.
I dont yet know how this will all come out, but I am going to keep writing to blogger/google and trying to get them to shut it down.
Im so confused about blogging right now, that I dont know what I will do down the line. Please just be aware of this. I would suggest that you copy every post you write into your word office or notepad with the date on it. If you ever need it ,for a similar reason as this, atleast you will have it dated and saved.
Mary Anne, again, thank you for allowing me to explain this here. I will be back to visit and comment on your blog many times...
Love ya xoxoxoxo
This is truly frightening.
I just had one of my posts scraped into some sort of teenage porn site, so I'm having issues, too.
I guess the message is shut it down if you must... but don't delete?
As for archiving, I'm told there's an automatic archiving 'spider' out there -- but I don't have the details.
I believe you can also make an Adobe (.pdf) copy of your own blog if you have the full-blown Adobe software (not just the reader).
Maybe some more technically minded people will get on this and assist. I will link to this post in the hopes of finding some additional (as in more competent than I) assistance....
This has happened quite a few times already...I have 3 blogging friends who decided to delete their blogs and they were immediately taken over by another person, usually porn sites! Apparently once the address is available, anyone can take it! Blogger shouldn't make it so easy...once you delete a blog, it should disappear completely! Ugh!
What a mess... thanks for doing this!! it's important that people know what is going on.
Thanks for posting this message although, I must confess, I am totally confused about how this happens. I don't know diddly squat about things like this in the blogging world. Way too naive of me I suppose.
I deleted my blog not too long ago during a domestic dispute. I wrote everyone I could think of and got it back. And yes, someone had taken my URL.
This is really scary! Keep us up to date on how google and/or blogger can help you/us. I guess we now know NOT to put anything on a blog site that you wouldn't want "out there" for everyone to read.
I don't know what the blog world is coming too!! They should just go to bloggy heaven when we delete them...
i wonder if skittles could help. she deleted her blog but was able to get it back. maybe???
smiles and good wishes, bee
I post from Windows Live Writer and it automatically archives my posts on my hard drive, but that doesn't help you now, Cathy. Future reference. I see three possibilities. Blogger made a major screw up themselves is the most likely. You were using an easy password to hack is second. Third, and least likely, is that you have spyware on your computer that this Biel character was able to access to get your password. I do hope you are running real-time AV, Firewall, Anti-spyware and antiphishing utilities?
If I had any Twizzlers, it would burn mine too.
Okay.. when I deleted my blog I first went here to Blogger Tips & Tricks. After reading what he said, I also emailed him and he was very good at writing me back.
There's a link in this post I did, I'm Back upon my return that also helped me a lot. I emailed THIS guy, too, and he was good about getting back to me.
I'm not sure which helped, but I was able to get it back!
(Someone who said they have trouble getting my blog, said for some reason sh CAN by clicking on my name in the comments.)
Everyone, thank you for all these suggestions. right now, it looks as though blogger may have actually taken him down. Im not sure except to say that when I googled my address, it no longer took me there. It just took me to a message from blogger. I hope this is the case and not just something temporary.
I do have good spyware installed and firewall so i dont know how this happens. I also think blogger screw up is a good possibility. Skittles, thank you for posting all this info. If I find that the blog hasn't actually been taken down, then I am going to try some of what you say and maybe get it back..
This is awful. I had no idea something like that could even happen. It makes you realize the Internet is wide open, like the Wild West.
The IT fellows where I work warned all of us about a certain blog award to be very careful of because of where it linked back. It had spyware. So I guess everyone has to be on guard.
Josie
I had no idea that something like this could occur. This is terrible, but I guess evil had to show up in the blogger world too eventually.....such a shame for us to have to worry about!
Good luck to Cathy and how nice of you to let her tell us about it on your site.
Hugs, my friend!
This is really unnerving isn't it. I've seen this happen to a number of blogging friends and they usually just establish another site.
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