Someone Hijacked my site, what should I do?

[pokerforfree]

I checked my links in Google Webmaster Tools today and noticed links coming in from the following domain:

xhttp://www.poker-4-free.org/

So I visited this site and notice a complete copy of my website, still having my links active and some added banners.

I am wondering what steps I have to take to stop this person.

All advice is helpful.

Thx,

Giorgio

[bahh]

Whois lookup for starters:

http://www.pir.org/

Contact his host or contact him if he has a public whois..

[Zilla]

Two steps to take.

1. Contact his host and file a DMCA infringement complaint - the host should take down his hosting within 24 hours.

If you search the hosts website support there may be a specific contact email to file DMCA complaints otherwise just send it to their main email address. (here is an example from hostgator http://support.hostgator.com/index.p...barticleid=199)

Use this as a template.

Dear Sirs,

This is official notification and complaint filed to you under the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to inform you of a copyright infringement being hosted on your servers.

This is notice to you that you should remove the offending content from your servers within 72 hours of this email and confirm in writing the action you have taken.

Section 1. Detailed identity of the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon.

The site which contains the original content is http://XXXXXXX and this site and it's owners hold the copyright to this material.

Section 2. Identify the the material that you claim is infringing upon the copyrighted work listed in item #1 above.

The site that is using copyrighted material is http://XXXXXXX
This is a direct copy of the website http://XXXXXXX with every page on the site being copied exactly.

Section 3. Information to permit us to contact you.
My contact details are as follows:
Contact name
email
phone #

Section 4. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

Section 5. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Regards,

Name
Address
email

2. Contact Google - google take alot longer to respond to DMCA compaints but they do investigate and remove the offending site from the index (will probably take a few weeks to a few months)

You have to fax the letter to google - full details can be found here
http://www.google.com/dmca.html


Once you have done the two steps above - then forget about it and let the host and google sort it for you.

Hope this helped,

Regards,

Adrian.

[Notspot]

Good list of things to do:-

http://www.copyscape.com/respond.php

Good luck!

[pokerforfree]

Wow, quick reponse!

This information is very valuable to me. I will take action today and keep y'all informed on the progress.

Already found someone else's site being hijacked by this guy as well on GPWA.

Thx again,

G

[mfosouto]

Still on this subject, how to prevent this from happening, or how to know that this is happening?

Do you use paid version of Copyscape?

[bahh]

How much is it for a premium account at Copyscape?

[mfosouto]

Copysentry is 4.95/mo , 10 pages only, one search / week. I believe it's .25 each extra page.

[Notspot]

You just make a deposit of $10 or so, then each search you perform costs 5c. You can set it up to perform searches automatically or on an ad-hoc manual basis.

That's the costs for the premium package.

[xpertadvice4u]

Yo, Adrian (Zilla)....thanks for your helpful response in this thread....posting the letter to send was beneficial.