WHO STEALS A WHOLE BLOG AND FAILS TO COVER THEIR TRACKS ??

Really???  My entire blog????  I wish I were joking but I'm serious.  The whole damn blog.

Aren't I just the lucky one.... or put another way, don't I have enough to do this month without having to concern myself with a blog that was launched about ten days ago.  Using all of my posts.  Word.For.Word.

It's one thing to have my credit cards stolen and it's quite another to have my entire BLOG reproduced.

Here's the quick version of the story.  Sandy... do you remember my blog post about Sandy.... well, Sandy was featured in an article that was simply spectacular.  I saw it on her Facebook page and I sent it out to twitter.

A short time later, I received a message on twitter mentioning Sandy with a link to a story.  I thought it was that very same article.  However, I wanted to make sure before I sent a return message.  I clicked through to the link and instead of this wonderful article, I see a post, THE same exact post, as the one I wrote on September 27th.  My words.  Every comma, every wise crack, every EVERYTHING.

I was confused and maybe even a bit amused.  Quite some time ago, I found a paragraph or two from a post I wrote when I first launched this blog.  On another blog.  I chose to ignore it.  Big deal.  Let the person get their ten minutes of giggles over comments about how clever and witty they were.

This thing, however was the entire post.  I sent a twitter message asking "Who is ........ ?"  and no, I'm not going to name the name to drive traffic to that site.  YET.  I began to scrutinize the blog a bit more carefully.  And I see the post about Mesothelioma.  And the one where I bitched about Suzanne Somers.  And the awareness one.....and before that, the one about insulting my intelligence and even my post about Jen (complete with the photograph).

At this point, I got pissed off.  Seriously pissed off.  Before I got pissed off, however, I was really thankful that Phyllis googled Sandy's name and that is how she stumbled on this fake blog.  Here's the way that conversation concluded and Phyllis, again, THANK you.....

@chemobrainfog The random elements of discovering the theft of your blog are a bit mind boggling. And it all started with @SandyKugelman.
— Phyllis G (@Metsgrr) October 8, 2013

I sent a few tweets to word press and just some random tweets about having my entire blog stolen.  The tight knit social media community rallied.  Validated anger?  Takes it right down to a slow simmer but with the lid on, a slow simmer can get hot enough to spill over.

This is a fair warning.  I'm really quite a super sleuth.  The truth is... I'm NOT but I swear, just like this happened so randomly, that's the way I stumble over all sorts of things.  The shit literally falls from the sky, into my lap.  Thus, I LOOK like a super sleuth when the reality is.... the shit falls into my lap and within five minutes, the person didn't cover their tracks well enough and whatever random thing fell INTO my lap has someone in a heap of trouble.  One day, we'll chat.  I have stories.  Boy do I have some great stories......

First, I saw that it was a word press blog but then, I saw the name in the address bar was a private domain.  They were not using the word press blog address (and by the way, it's time already... I own chemobrainfog.com and maybe I have to redirect this blog to that address, after I sort out this mess).

The footer of the blog?  You gotta love this shit:

FakeBullshitBlog Copyright 2013

Powered by Word Press

Designed by Yellow Blog

Yellow blog was a clickable link and that took me to a site written in Russian.  Idiot that I am, I clicked on the stupid link and now I'm wondering what I may have compromised by clicking on the link.  So, it appears someone designed the site although, they forgot to take down the sample post so I'm thinking there may be a "bot" behind this whole thing.

Except, I very quickly determined that the domain is being hosted by Go Daddy.  Quite simply, that means someone PAID for this domain.  I also learned with the same swiftness, that Go Daddy is going pink for the cause.  Danica Patrick will be in a pink car for this month, Go Daddy is proud to support, Chevy is doing this, she had hot pink converse sneakers on her feet........  we might call that a case of adding insult to injury.  I have to rifle through all this pink nonsense to get to the phone number.  

The folks at Go Daddy were helpful to the extent that they could help.  They directed me to the area of their site where I could locate the owner of the domain.  The someone who PAID for the domain and went to the trouble of having a simple site designed, was NOT smart enough to pay to keep their name private.

I have a name, a phone number and an email address.  I am going to watch the site for a bit longer to see if this continues.  There is a method by which a site can "scrape" posts using the feeds.  For now, I'm leaving everything alone with the exception of the addition of this iCopyright thing you will see at the bottom of the blog posts.

You see, the person who went to all of this trouble to do this is located in Delhi.  India.  Although I'm not a conspiracy theorist in any way, shape or form, I am mindful of the fact that someone was mightily pissed off at me for failing to understand the importance that cervical cancer study where impoverished women in India had to die for no reason.  I was, as I recall, an "armchair activist."

Maybe it's just a "bot" scraping my feed or maybe it IS a bottom feeder using my scraps of material.  Time will tell.  And IF I find out this has anything to do with my blog posts that were so critical of the research protocols in the slums of DELHI, there will be blood, figuratively speaking.   For now, as I continue to closely monitor this rip off site,  I'm going with:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

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