A few days ago I posted about the bad blog thing stealing all kinds of garden related posts:
“There is a weird blog-thing ripping off all kinds of content from my blog and from others’ blogs as well. I can tell because I often put links in my blog to old posts, and when this blog-thing rips off my content, it shows up as a link to my blog in Technorati. I don’t want to put a link to the blog-thing here, so I’ll spell it out: “gardening DOT maxblog DOT eu”. The posts are always ‘by Carlos’. Funny thing is that when I try to click on this blog address, I always get “page not found”. I did a search on “maxblog” and got a hit on a site that looks like it is where you can go to set up a “maxblog”. There is an email address, admin AT maxblog DOT eu, on that site, but I am afraid to send something to it, for fear that my email address will be compromised and I’ll start getting a bunch of spam email. Has anyone else noticed this bad blog-thing? Any advice on what to do about it?”
I sent an email to the admin at maxblog this morning and got a quick answer back to send links to examples of stolen posts. I sent three recent examples. Then I got another email back saying the “account has been removed”.
As I seem to have been blocked from seeing this “bad blog thing”, perhaps by my IP address or something, could someone(s) try to get to it, who got to it before, and see if it is really gone?
I’d be forever grateful.
And then if it is gone, we can celebrate… at least until such time as the next thief comes along.
Update… the blog thing appears to be deleted. Gone. For some reason, I’m reminded of the movie, The Wizard of Oz, and the part when the munchkins all found out that the wicked witch was dead. Time to celebrate (I hope not prematurely) in the garden blogosphere…
I checked “gardening,” “garden” and “gardens” DOT etc., and all of them just showed a white page that said “Subdomain:” and then the word I typed at the top. No content. Is that what you saw?
When I went to www DOT maxblog DOT eu it prompted me to login to see the content or to create my own blog. There was no way to peruse the blogs within without logging in. Weird.
Actually, I went to this site earlier today. It looked like someone was in the process of setting up a garden blog. There were even a couple of posts and some pictures of a little boy.
There was a link for blogroll but the content was standard content on how to edit copy.I figured perhaps I was at the wrong place or that the site was changed. I didn’t see anything related to anyone else’s blog.
Now when I go there I also get an empty page with the subirectory message.
Robin (Bumblebee)
Oh dear how nieve I am..I just don’t think that people would actually steal blog material??? tsk tsk
I want to thank you for sending me birthday greetings..hugs NG
Weird! I can’t believe you had material stolen! That is low! I love the Wizard of Oz though and Glinda is still fabulous. I totally wanted that dress when I was a kid! I guess that may be one reason I like sparkle!
The thieving is blog is dead. I told Carlos of his imminent demise in a few comments I left that were never approved by the moderator and posted.
For some reason I think it was set up to steal and post on automatic. I watched it for a couple of hours and stolen posts including pictures from all kinds of gardening blogs were being added every few minutes. It had to have been programmed to work off of feeds and tags or Carlos was one very fast thief.
Good grief, another thief? Well Carol, I’m glad that for you this is over now but I agree that it won’t be the last time we’ll hear of content thieves. 🙁
BTW We’re not in Kansas? Oh that’s right, it’s Indiana here. 😉
I noticed that mine was stolen last week when I looked at Technorati.
Der Blick von Mary: Mein Erster Organisierter Vogelspaziergang (a tourism blog) (the name of my post was “My First Organized Bird Walk)
My text and photos in German.
It’s also an advertisement for certain drugs like VIAGRA!
Yeah, I’m mad and will check technorati a few times a week and hope I don’t see a trend.
All… Thanks for all the checking, the bad blog thing does indeed appear to be gone. No recent Technorati posts showed up. I feel relieved (until next time).
Carol at May Dreams Gardens
I’m so behind. I don’t even know what Technorati is. Or how to set up something that will automatically let me know when my favorite blogs have updated. *sigh* Some blogger I am!
I’m so glad it’s gone! I noticed a while ago that it was stealing my posts, only because I have a Google alert set up for the phrase “In the Garden Online.” The first thing I saw were other people’s “Good, Bad, and Ugly” posts where they mentioned my site by name. Then, I saw several of my posts in there as well. I was the same as you, Carol—I didn’t want to risk emailing anyone over there. You never know.
Blackswamp_Girl… I recommend using Google Reader to find out when your favorite blogs post, and I think if you go to Technorati, you’ll find instructions to sign up. Then you can see who all links to your blog, and occasionally find out who is stealing from it (though Google Alerts may help with that, too.)
Colleen…. I’m glad to! I feel much better knowing it is gone.
Carol at May Dreams Gardens
I found a few cached pages of that maxblog gardening site on a google search, but the website itself seems dead to me. I have noticed another one stealing garden blog content though. It seems automated though, because the posts are written like form letters.
It is located at yvettesflower DOT com
There are 6 posts just on Oct 23 (so far). I have heard that these things can start as someone’s real blog and then some greedy web-based business buys the website from them and uses it for advertising, barely maintaining the appearances of the original blog.
I think I noticed this site because my google analytics picked up some link (stolen bit) from my blog on this site.