Competitor hired someone to clone my site

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matts5150

New member
Feb 2, 2012
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Hey Guys,
So over the last week someone has repeatedly tried to download my php ecom site. While tracking down where they were coming from I found a yahoo answers page where someone was asking where they can buy the template I used direct linking back to my site and a bid request on freelancer.com where they hired someone for $250 bucks to create a clone or something similar to my site. I'm sure I'm not the first person this has happened to, what you have you guys done in the past about people cloning your shit? I'm thinking about calling them out on the yahoo answers page or maybe just help them out with their "seo", they don't list who they are however I as able to dig their site out of a previous question they posted there a few years ago.
Thanks
 


WOW - really good research on your part. Must say, the people copying did a pretty terrible job hiding their tracks.

DMCA the shit outta them
 
You can't DMCA someone just because they cloned your site. Cloned is a very ambiguous word. You mean they stole the exact images from your site? Are they using the same copy?

You are using a publicly available theme. If they just created a site using the same or similar framework with their own copy and images their is nothing you can do.
 
Thanks for the replies, They just hired someone a few days ago to copy it and haven't finished it yet. I'm trying to figure out what to do if and when it is finished. The part of the site they're mainly trying to copy is our custom design program. It's setup where you can mix and match parts to build your final product and even gives you a final rendering of what it will look like with all the parts integrated. Spent lots of time/money getting it developed and pisses me off someone wants to pay some $250 to clone it. May have to just wait to see if they can pull it off though, easier said than done, part of it is encrypted in zend as well.
It wasn't that hard to track them down all the links they posted used the same php session id, in fact someone just hit the link coming from india grrr...
 
DMCA - Trust me most hosting companies won't even want the trouble for their petty $10 a month client. They will shut his shit down.
 
Unless your server is hacked, they will fail. Without all the code, $250 isn't enough for anyone competent to clone that functionality.
 
yeah, I would wait 2-3 months until they've spent a few grand on "trying" to do it, then file your request.
 
@Meatytreats - I like that idea, plus if I call them out on it now, they'll have a chance to it up as much as possible, right now they have no idea I'm watching them.
 
While you're at it, if they are hotlinking any files on your server around their shopping cart checkout, consider doing a conditional mod_rewrite so that it redirects back to your site's shopping cart checkout.

They'll likely be all, "crap, my stuff just disappeared" and go fill their cart back and checkout in your area.

This is better than doing a straight redirect for their whole site, because it'll take them ages to figure it out unless they do a test checkout themselves. Meanwhile, you get their business.
 
Ok, this is getting ridiculous. While loking thru referrer traffic where the user tried malicious urls to check for security holes. I found a post on adobe.com's forums dated a month ago where someone else is trying to copy my design program, yeah on adobe.com, not exactly underground. They first asked how they could clone it and get it to work on their ecom site that was created in cold fusion. Then after several people told them they'd need to hire an experienced coder, they stated they'd ran my site thru a decompiler and have the source code but can't get it to work on their site and ask if someone there could help them?? Then even went on to say if they could get it to work they were going to use it as their own. Are people really this dumb, i'm going to talk to my atty about this one as they've publically admitted they're trying to decompile my code and use it as their own. I just got to figure out who this one is however, I couldn't find hardly any info on them on their site or by googling their username. Any ideas?
 
flaw3d said:
DMCA - Trust me most hosting companies won't even want the trouble for their petty $10 a month client. They will shut his shit down.
Click to expand...

This. I was a $400/mo customer at a hosting company and somebody sent a bogus DMCA (as in nothing I was doing was remotely covered by the DMCA) and the hosting company told me that although they thought I was right they were taking it down just to be safe and until any further legalwork was done on my behalf if I added it back again they would cancel my account.
 
@cardine - so with the DMCA your guilty until proven innocent, nice that will probably be sufficient, thanks
 
Since people are trying to decompile your script you should have the script check its own file hash and if modified send several dickrolls in there for when they finally do and of course a pingback to your site that tells you how many assholes you have dickrolled and their IP etc...
 
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