The State of the Blogosphere report, in October 2006 noted that seventy percent of all blog postings are spam. Splogs are a growing problem in the blogosphere. If you have a self hosted Wordpress blog there are several plugins that you can use to help fight back against thieves. In this post not only will we discuss some must have Wordpress plugins, but we’ll also look at some informative articles on content theft.
Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin - Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin adds a short copyright notice to the footer of each feed entry
Blog Copyright - Blog Copyright is a WordPress plugin that displays a dated copyright mark on single posts and general, category, and archive queries.
WpLicense - WpLicense is a plugin for WordPress which allows users to select a Creative Commons license for their blog and content.
WP-Ban - WP-Ban bans users by IP address, host name, or referrer from visiting your blog.
AntiLeech - Antileech produces a fake set of content especially for splog scrapers that includes links back to your site.
Akismet - Akismet is a plugin which identifies and blocks comment and trackback spam on blogs. Akismet works with Movable Type,Lifetype, Drupal, Blojsom, Bloxsom,phpBB, PunBB, Geeklog, Serendipity, Coppermine, Nucleus, b2evolution, Express Engine, Simple Machine Forums, etc
WordPress Plugin: Digital Fingerprint — detecting content theft - This Wordpress plugin designed by Maxpower.ca was created to help you locate instances of unauthorized content use by inserting a “digital fingerprint” manually into your posts which is seen only in your feeds.
Article regarding Content Theft
Content Theft: How At Risk is Your Blog? - Jonathan Bailey takes a look at feed scraping content. Are you at risk?
What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content - Lorelle Vanfossen talks a little about what to do when someone steals your content.
PlagiarismToday & The DMCA on Seven Blog Hosts -
Jonathon takes a look at Seven Blog Hosts and how they measure up in the fight against copyright infringements.
(Just to note: With regards to Wordpress, recently someone scraped my content on Wordpress.com. I contacted Wordpress and within 24 hours the content was removed and the blog was suspended. Blogger also needs to be applauded as they are doing a great job with regards to the fight against splogs. I have reported several spam blogs and they have deleted them all. )
What solutions have you found for fighting spam and sploggers?
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15 responses so far ↓
Lorelle
// Sep 10, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Do you mean someone at WordPress.com was scraping your blog’s content? Or it was a WordPress blog? WordPress, in general, won’t do anything if a WordPress blog is scraping content. They can’t. Too many are and it’s the blogger and web host’s responsibility, not WordPress.
However, if it was a WordPress.com blog, as they are the host, they would take action. I’m just a little confused with what you mean and want to make sure your readers know the difference, Rose.
Also, I’d like to clarify the different between a splog and spam.
Spam, specifically comment spam, is created by computer “robots”, programs that crawl the web, and humans looking for ways to leave comments to promote their nasties. Akismet works across a variety of blog and forum services, and Spam Karma and Bad Behavior work for WordPress, though Bad Behavior can also work for other blogging platforms and websites. They protect your blog’s comments.
A splog is a “spam blog”, a blog created using their content, someone else’s content illegally, or a combination thereof, to promote their nasties and fake out Google for PageRank. They are used to create trackback spam, though not necessarily every splog does so.
For the most part, other than stumbling across them while searching and researching on the web (please report them to Google if you find them) or when they steal your content without your permission, few bloggers come in contact with splogs.
The WordPress Plugins and utilities you’ve mention do not stop someone from stealing their content. They provide ways of warning and tracking your content, in case it is stolen and abused. I sure wish they would stop them. Life would be SO much easier, wouldn’t it?
Jonathan Bailey is my hero. He is changing how we view content theft and plagiarism on the web, so thanks for spreading the word, Rose. It’s so important that we understand these issues.
Assume everything on the web is copyrighted. Ask first. That’s the only way it should be.
Thanks!
Bob Johnson
// Sep 10, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Wow good stuff Rose, 70% thats a high number of splogs. Interesting links, I especially like the antileech one!
Rose DesRochers
// Sep 10, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Lorelle, I updated the post not to confuse my readers. Thank you for pointing that out dear. It was a blogger on Wordpress.com that scraped my content. I hope my post did not imply that I was stating they would stop someone from stealing their content. I know they won’t do that. lol
I just felt the plugins help fight back. I’m afraid the only thing that we continue to do is report them. Thank you for commenting. As always your comments are appreciated.
Rose DesRochers
// Sep 10, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Thank you Bob.
Rose Sylvia
// Sep 10, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Lucky for me I have Marty to advise me and he installed Akismet. It works awesome so far and is really easy to use. I just check and approve any real posts it catches and check and delete the rest.
Since my blog is new the SPAM is too; however, I believe it will work just as well because Akismet “learns” by the decisions made by the bloggers. If the bloggers are wise about what they mark SPAM versus not SPAM, it will be accurate. If they are not, it will be less so.
Rose DesRochers
// Sep 10, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Rose, Akismet has caught 69,052 spam comments for me since I first installed it. It has also caught 20 that were not spam nor did I mark them spam. Thank goodness I checked my Akismet before it was emptied.
Carl Coddington
// Sep 10, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Akismet is my hero. I love it. It picks up on spam that I would have thought were regular posts.
BTW that is very impressive having the famous Lorelle comment on your blog.
Rose DesRochers
// Sep 10, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Isn’t it? She likes me, she really really likes me. She even sent me an autographed book.
Matt Wolfe
// Sep 11, 2007 at 12:19 am
This is some great information. I’m definitely going to install some of those plugins. I had no idea it was such a huge problem.
Lorelle
// Sep 11, 2007 at 10:42 am
Oh, stop it! Both of you. Geez.
Thanks for clearing that up in your post, Rose. I figured that was the story, but WordPress (the org) gets a lot of people contacting it asking for help in stopping splogs and copyright violators and there isn’t anything they can do. WordPress.com, however, wields a huge hammer and stomps such nasties boom bang squish.
And thanks for reporting on the tools that help is in the fight to protect our blogs, as well as our freedom of speech. It’s our voice. We have a right to use it, protect it, and defend it. It’s terrible that we have to deal with the bugs along the way.
Rose DesRochers
// Sep 12, 2007 at 7:04 pm
My pleasure Lorelle.
Lee Odden
// Sep 12, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Great post Rose. I’ve been dealing with this for over 3 years on our blog. In one case, the offender called me back after I asked him to stop copying our site and literally said, “Bring it on”. After following this advice his site is still not to be found in Google.
Rose DesRochers
// Sep 12, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Lee, thank you for the link for reporting this content.
Marcia
// Sep 12, 2007 at 11:24 pm
They are counting on people like me with no patience to fight… but they don’t know that was the OLD me.. now the OLDER me feels like fighting… so I have bookmarked this post… Thanks, Rose.
Mike Goad
// Sep 13, 2007 at 2:54 am
Great blog article… and the comments so far have been just as great. It’s unfortunate that there is so much unethical use of the internet.
Askimet has caught over 100,000 spam comments on my Chronicles of the American of the American Civil War blog . Unfortunately, there is just no way that I can check all of the comments to see if any are legitimate. There’s too many!
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