[Stanly22]

Greeting all!

I am hoping to get your opinions on an idea I have to slow down some thieves.

My company is having trouble with certain individuals blatantly steeling graphics and ideas from one of my websites. These individuals used to be vendors for products my website sells... but they decided to be my competitor instead and now copy EVERYTHING I do. Anytime I make a change or add something, within 48 hours their sites will reflect the change usually with my graphics and/or copied text. Even my customer testimonials that we have received over time are all on their site.

I have no problem with competition, that is what makes the U.S. great! But I do have a problem with the way they do nothing on their own and just piggy back all of my design, code, and marketing efforts.

We are moving forward with a legal team and that is all fine and good. It just takes time and there is something else I want to do about this and that is why I am boring you with my story.

I have certain info about these people such as IP addresses, MAC addresses and cookies in their browsers that let me see their slimy trail. (and how many times they click on my Google AdWords ads every day, grrrrrr!) They used to login to part of my site to fill orders so, of course, all that data was collected.

Now, I think I want to create a mirror of my violated site. This mirror would never change and just stay the way it is now. Whenever the vagrants visit my site, I redirect them to the mirror. Simple as that. From now on any updates and improvements would not be seen by them.

I understand that this is not foolproof as they could easily be at a different machine someday and pull up my site. But even if it gives me a few months of breathing room it would be a GREAT improvement.

So, what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Do you see any legal implications (privacy, data collection and stuff) that could come back to haunt me for doing this?

And do you have any better ideas for me? I know I am not the only one in this boat. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Love, peace, and hair grease,
Stan

[adras]

What's your site.

[Skinny]

Wow that's unfortunate Stan.

Edit: I wouldn't mention the site. Especially if you are starting legal things. Perhaps PM it but I wouldn't make it public.

I'm not sure how effective a mirror will be (not that it won't be just never created one so I don't fully understand the idea).

These people seem very serious so I'm not sure what things would keep them at bay. You could try preventing them from accessing your site (from their IP) but again not sure how effective that is.

You could see where these guys are being hosted and talk to the host, they might shut them down but I'm not sure if you wanted do that as you are in legal proceedings.

Hope you get this matter cleared up. It's a pain to be distracted from your real work.

I'm sure members who have been in this postion before (not me) will be of more help to you.

[oli]

report them to google,
report them to their hosting and domain registration company.
Get a lawyer to draft a letter to them.

[Stanly22]

I hesitate to give the site, just because it could lead them to this post and that would be bad. Can I get their hosting company info from WhoIs? I think reporting them to their hosting company would be a good idea... but would the hosting company even care?

O yea, they have truste logo on their site. Of course they aren't registered with truste. I reported them to truste (out of spite ) but nothing has changed.