The discovery came from Michael Donahue, an information-technology professional we asked to look at legalschnauzera.blogspot.come, the India-based site that copied our work. Donahue not only found the source of our problems, he also found at least one other U.S. blogger who had been targeted.
That was the Good Point Ideas Blog, which can be found at retroworks.blogspot.com. Robin Ingenthron, of Middlebury, Vermont, writes the blog and owns a company called American Retroworks Inc. The blog and the company focus on recycling, electronic exports, and fair trade.
On January 9, 2014, Ingenthron wrote a post about a blog from India that was lifting his content, and he traced it to someone using the name "Poonam Verma." In this case, the URL was changed to retroworksa.blogspot.com and the title became "Damageethical Blog."
From Ingenthron's post on the discovery:
How's this for a doppleganger? Damageethical Blog, "by Poonam Verma". He may be from India, or from Sri Lanka, I see 22 pages accessed from Sri Lanka this morning.
It's registered as retroworksa.blogspot.com (notice the letter "a" affixed to retroworks). And it's a complete reposting of my work in this blog.
Except every post has a crap link advertisement in front. I haven't found any malware.
So... since I'm a mission oriented dude, do I see this as "getting the word out?" Or should I be outraged at the paid ads for water removal, sewage, etc. he's selling? It's like running into a cyber-Leonard Zelig from India.
That's exactly what happened with Legal Schnauzer. An "a" was added to our URL, with content lifted and an ad linked to each post.
Our thanks to Michael Donahue for helping us learn that we aren't the only victims of this scam.
