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Content thieves

From time to time I google “Login Dongle” to see if there are any new reviews of my plugin.

Sometimes I find reviews stolen from others. That’s a common issue these days.

But today, I’ve found a new breed of stolen content that deserves some attention.

original content
How to Improve the Security of your WordPress Blog
published on 2012-08-07 by Amit Agarwal

 

stolen content
How to Secure of your WordPress Blog: Improving WordPress Security
published on ??? by ???

Usually, a thief steals content by (automatically) copying it from its original site to their own. You can easily find stolen content by googling a short sentence of any post, between quotes. For example, today I see that that content has been stolen 355 times !!

But in this case the thief used substitutions, thus cleanly defeating the above search check. For example, let’s compare side by side the snippets that refer to my plugin in both versions of the content: original and stolen.

Here is the original version.

This plugin takes a very unique approach to protect your WordPress. It generates a bookmarklet with a secret question that you can add to you bookmarks. While on the WordPress login page, enter you credentials and then press this bookmarklet to get into your WordPress – the button on the login screen won’t work.

Here is the stolen one.

This tool requires a very exclusive strategy to secure your WordPress. It produces a bookmarklet with a key query that you can add to you favorites. While on the WordPress sign in web page, get into you experience and then media this bookmarklet to get into your WordPress – the option on the sign in display will not perform.

As you see, the stolen version has been obtained from the original one using these blind (i.e. automatic) substitutions:

plugin tool
takes requires
unique exclusive
approach strategy
protect secure
generates produces
secret key
question query
bookmarks favorites
login sign in
page web page
enter get into
credentials experience
press media
button option
login sign in
screen display
won’t will not
work perform

I’ve used bold to highlight substitutions that don’t work in the context.

There are two interesting reasons that explain why substitutions are highly effective for a thief even if they are not perfect.

The first is that the thief’s purpose is not to publish understandable news but it is to provide fresh content for their ads. And the second is that Google search engine finds substituted content too, so their ads get the same chances to get printed as the content they steal.

For example, in the results of the Login Dongle search, the original content appears at position 30 and the stolen one at 49. Not bad.

 

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About the Barcelona Internet Startups Meetup Group

This is a suggestion I posted on 2012-02-27, and I’m still waiting any feedback.

I’ve been to both Speed Dating meetups as a tech guy. The last time I had the chance to listen to more interesting projects. That’s good.

At the last meetup, I think we were like 20 techies and 60 entrepreneurs. This is 20 x 60 x 3 minutes each = 3600 minutes of 2 people chats. Those 60 hours could be run with a parallelism of 20 at a time, so they could boil down to a 3 hours meetup at least. In reality, it lasted less than two hours, still enough to meet (theoretically) around 40 different entrepreneurs, but I only met 7 ! (it’s 10%)

This is not a complain, just a surprise. I know how difficult it is to have people come, so if this group was not successful, there wouldn’t be such an issue. However it looks like there is space for improvement.

If I went to a speed dating to find a partner to ask out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYBo5eS5pW8),
1: men and women are the same number
2: age is a big factor which is taken care of beforehand
3: before actually speaking to anyone, I can see how they look like
4: when we meet at last, we have limited time to understand if we match

In our meetups,

1: parallelism. We should be the same number for each role; if we are not, either (a) move extra people to the next meetup or (b) make them play another role.

2: age. IMO, this is the size of the idea (and maturity of the business, if any). It’s not the same to meet someone who needs a web presence to brand themselves; someone who wants to reach millions of people around the globe; someone who got an idea while having a shower; and someone who is growing the proven business they are expert in.
NOTE that we do not have to filter out members based on this factor, but we should know beforehand the size of their startup effort.

3: likability. This is mostly some details about the idea/team. Who is the leader, who are the other members, what do they do, what are they expert in, what is the idea about, is it selling a product, a service, a software, is there a website to look at, … And finally, it’s not the same to be looking for an associate or an employee.

4: matching. If we get here after knowing all of the above, it’s clear that a lot of time is already saved. This step is not for pitching ! Here we just need to say hello, get a gut feeling about the other and fix any misunderstandings.