Introduction
There are millions of websites launched every day online, in the whole world. In this overlying world of digitalization, if someone steals your website content or data and you are showing leniency towards your digital media, then you may fall into the theft of your website content. The term is also known as content theft.
In this article, we are going to discuss about content theft and the ways you can overcome it through the out-turns of content theft.
Table of content
Introduction
What is content theft?
How to find if your website is stolen or copied?
- Simple Google Search
- Use online tools
What to do if someone copied your website?
- Find the owner
- Get in touch
- Use Warnings
- DMCA takedown notice to hosting service provider,
- Taking legal action
How to protect your website content from being copied?
- Secure the code
- Disable copy-paste
- Put copyright details on the website
- Get professional help
- WordPress protection
Conclusion
Closing
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What is content theft?
If you want your content to be private and used for your own valuable benefit paying attention and monitoring it is important.
Many media sites have struggled with content theft since the internet has become the mainline for every aspect. Usually, content aggregators scrape and rebuild your content in order to generate traffic to their website that can increase their revenue without spending hard work and money on editorial work. Your editorial content can be scraped in order to use in tools and reported sales without any difficulties if you do not monitor your content regularly. The motivation for theft is obvious as copying content is a lot easier than working to build content on their own.
Though content theft is profitable, it must not be done. There are some ways you can prevent content theft from your website by using tools that can monitor your content for you. Generally, the aggregators use crawlers that are automated software that scans your website and stole the content they are interested in.
How to find if your website is stolen or copied?
As we discussed earlier there are millions of websites online and searching if your content is stolen in these large numbers is similar to finding a needle lost in the grass. But with the right set of tools, you can achieve your goal and easily locate if your website content is stolen. These are some steps through which you can find if the content of your website is copied or stolen over the internet,
- Simple Google Search
If your content is stolen and your website content is stolen with the whole design, running google search based on your content phrases that are unique on your website and scanning those pages of content can help you figure out the same content or design over google. You can make this exercise a weekly habit and check your content over to prevent any copying or theft.
- Use online tools
Using free online tools can be efficient in checking with your content theft. Many online tools can scan everything starting from the design to all the editorial content to check whether your content is safe. Plagiarism is the technical name for content theft. You can use tools such as CopyScape that can check for you if your content is stolen. This tool is free and allows you to check plagiarism. Many similar tools offer the same services for free as well as premium versions for better evaluation.
Your web service providers can also offer website monitoring services that can help you track the content and maintenance of your website.
What to do if someone copied your website?
While you own a website some of the content, images or designs may be similar and you are not having any intention of unfair use, but it is not possible that a whole website has similar features and designs as you have. Therefore, you must be aware of these issues.
These are some steps you must follow if you observe your content is stolen,
- Find the owner
It is not acceptable that your content is stolen and you come across a website similar to yours with all the designs, content, and features that can be annoying. But that doesn’t mean approaching a lawyer directly and make a case of plagiarism and forgery. Before taking any action knowing about the website owner and contacting regarding the issue can be turn out beneficial. The contact of the owner may be somewhere on the website and contacting and getting in touch with the owner is important.
- Get in touch
There are many scenarios where the website owner is unaware of the website design, or graphics and even unaware that the content posted on his/her website is stolen. This usually happens when you hire an unprofessional for your website that doesn’t have much knowledge and copies the data of another website to complete the tasks. So, the best approach made is to talk to the owner and get familiar with the issue, if it is a mistake done, it can be resolved without much trouble.
What if the website owner doesn’t respond to your emails and messages?
- Use Warnings
If you are not getting a response from the website owner that had copied your content for many days, now it’s time to take legal actions and copyright infringements. Usually, after these warnings, the website or the copied content is taken out of the website to avoid any legal allegation. Whereas, if the website still exists as the owner chooses not to reply you need to proceed to the next step,
- DMCA takedown notice to hosting service provider,
You can figure out who is the hosting service provider of a particular website through tools or their registered companies. Once you discover the hosting provider you can fill the DMCA notice and send it to the hosting provider. If there is proof that your content is stolen, the hosting firms will take down the copycat website to avoid any legal brawl among hosting providers.
- Taking legal action
If your content is valuable and important for your website and you are determined to take down the culprit that stole your content and designs at any cost then you must visit a lawyer and hire an attorney. Just a single, legal letter can create an impact over the website owner or hosting provider that copied the content of your website and you can take down the website that is copied. The process sometimes can take along. But you will be successful in avoiding people from copying your website content or designs.
Therefore, these are the steps you must take if you find your website content is being copied.
How to protect your website content from being copied?
Better than going the long way of legal actions and warnings you can avoid these steps by preventing your content from just being stolen. These are some steps you can use to protect your website content and designs,
- Secure the code
To protect your website features and designs from being stolen you must protect your website codes with an extra layer of encryption and security. Hiring a team of experts or website solutions that can add security to your website from securing your website code is an efficient way to do so.
- Disable copy-paste
If you have come across some websites, you can’t copy-paste their content or information as it is restricted from the development team. Your website development team can easily safeguard your website content for you by disabling the copy-paste option from the web pages. This option is usually applied to websites of photographers, artists, bloggers, etc who display their work online and sell those services online. This step can prevent your website content from being copied.
- Put copyright details on the website
Warning people about the consequences they can face over copyrighted material and copying or using the data without your permission can get them into legal trouble. This drives most of the content copycats away from your websites.
- Get professional help
Various website solutions offer brands help over media and content thefts. They safeguard your website from content-stealing as well as monitor your website regularly.
- WordPress protection
If your site is a WordPress site then you have many platforms such as plugins that can protect your content and images from being stolen over the internet.
The above steps can help your website in avoiding your content from being stolen and can prepare your website for a longer branding run.
Conclusion
Other people earn money through your quality content and creativity. High-quality content attracts traffic and customer loyalty. There is an increase in sales of your services with this quality content. No one likes it if others earn free money from their hard work and hence protecting your website from content theft is important and taking steps accordingly is necessary.
Closing
IntCIS provides you with a wide range of security solutions that help in securing your content as well as your website from any malicious threats.
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We offer several website – maintenance packages that will ensure your site is up to date, functions correctly, and remains secure.
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