Transcript:

I recently came across a Tik Tok video where a design business had their whole website cloned and some scammer was using it to trick people into trying to apply for a job at that business and then charging them an application fee and stealing their credentials don’t really know that the how the scam was happening on the other end but we do know that that whole design agency had their website cloned completely so it looked identical to theirs except they just changed out one section instead of a contact us it had apply now and that apply now was a form that the person had to fill out which then initiated a process where the scammer was able to then work on them further to try and take advantage of them and get money out of them somehow so I helped this business out I came across it on Tik Tok and I thought I could step in there and help it out I love doing internet slothing and figuring things out and helping people with the web that’s what I do so I checked it out I went and I looked at this both first the actual designs website then I went looked at the one that was the Clone and they just took a little change the domain a little bit so it was a very similar domain almost almost identical domain and they cop coped all the design they just took off part of the logo and then the rest of it was all the same even the same people the same bios the same everything was the same on the website except for that application part so I did a little research into it basically what I did was rightclick and view code view source code and looked in and I saw what the source code for that cloned website was for the scamers website and it turns out that it was the exact same source code as the main website which was that was running on Squarespace so this was a good thing because on Squarespace you can then make a a a request because they are not allowed to host any copyrighted in uh data on squarespace’s server so that’s a violation of squarespace’s terms so that that’s the first thing I told them to do is you need to open up a ticket with Squarespace and show them the website and tell them that this person right here has using squares spaces servers to clone our website our copyright material and then the second thing I did was I go went and looked up uh I used the I can lookup which is lookup so l k u. I can I icc.org that’s a lookup tool where you can look and find out when a domain was registered by whom and when it expires a lot of information about a domain so I found out that this person this scammer had registered The Domain in the 24th of December of this last year so December 24th 2023 and it had the person’s full name and their address so it actually said the name of the person first and last name and they had their address located down in Nigeria so I was like wow that’s pretty interesting all their data is right there so I shared that with them with the owner of the design company I sent them this is the person’s name and this is the where they live and this is when they registered it and then here’s the company that they registered it through and then on the actual lookup there is an email for abuse it was like abuse contact at the name of this register and I said you need to send them an email saying hey somebody’s using your domain register services to clone my content and and my copyright material and send them a a request as well so you’re hitting them at the Domain and you’re hitting them at the hosting so that’s what I told them to do because there’s really not much else you can do they would this this design firm had hired other developers to try and do like a a Dos attack and try to take down the website it’s like that’s that’s just a waste of time and that’s not really a good way to go about it not only that but you’re actually doing you know they what they did was illegal but when you try to dos and attack their website that’s another illegal activity so just because somebody breaks in and robs your store doesn’t mean you go to their house and break in and rob their house you know you have to go about it the right way so that was I shared that information with the owner and she was very very happy very grateful with that um even saying hey I’m going to I’ll probably even use you guys for Web Design Services in the future which I thought was very flattering but I love helping people so if you’re in a similar type of situation those are the two steps that you need to do I explain how I investigated the source code of the website and I investigated the domain that they used um and then you need to go right to the source and then write them a ticket and you just keep working that ticket until they take it down because a copyright uh is a serious issue and is something that legally they do have to take action with the companies that you’re paying to for your website and for your registration so this is joe with Sky Studios if you’re in a similar situation definitely comment down below I can help you as well if you need help with your website or online marketing you have questions definitely get a hold of me I run Sky Point Studios I’d love to help you out and thank you so much for watching my video I’ll catch you on the next one.

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