The Hit List - Scraping bye

Ah, the internet. You can shop with ease, research weird stuff like Flehmen responses, and connect with people from every corner of the globe. You can also put your work out into the world. It feels good to share! Yay!

Except when the scrapers show up.

Content scrapers are people or bots that take the content from other websites without permission and try to pass it off as their own. Sometimes a person does this through manual copy and paste. Other times, bots crawl the website and automatically help themselves to content – in some cases, thousands of pages in the blink of an eye. No matter how it’s done, it’s gross – and illegal AF.

About a week ago, I caught one such site lifting one of my Hit Lists posts. Naturally, this infuriated me. It took a bit of detective work to find the culprit behind this theft but once I did, the gloves were off. I confronted him (some guy in Thailand) and demanded he take my shit down. He had a lame excuse about using an aggregator and “didn’t have any control” over this thieving stuff. Which is bogus because he promptly took my work off his site. Which begs the question: if it’s so easy to take it down, why not make the time to write your own original content?

It boggles my mind.

There’s more.

The other night, I was ready to hit the hay when I discovered a new twist in scraping: some bot is now linking to my Google Business profile and creating phony events. When you look at my listing, you see all these events (with poor spelling I might add) that go nowhere. However, scroll down and you’ll see a little map with a link to the person who created the event. That link goes to a numerology site. What kind of fresh hell way of marketing is this?

Needless to say, I’m not pleased and have contacted Google. My research has indicated that this is a new problem for Google My Business because they removed some of the “gates” around events – which means any bot or other business can attach their events to your Google My Business account. Instead of having control over your page, anybody or bot can spam your Google My Business listing.

I’ve filed my complaints but we shall see what happens from this point out. I’m not the only business this has happened to – and most likely, I won’t be the last unless this gets fixed. We should feel safe as business owners on the internet. Our content should be protected. But until that happens, we must be vigilant and ready to throw down when these ne’er do wells show up and take a bite. I’ll update this page once I see how this shakes out.

Until then, be nice and don’t take other people’s work. And if someone takes yours – BE READY TO RUMBLE. Protect your stuff!

*UPDATE: There has already been an update since I wrote this post. I got in contact with the owner of the numerology site. Turns out, they use “affiliates” from a “click bank” service – and that particular affiliate “went rogue” and started illegally posting events to my page that linked over to the numerology site. (I know, it’s a complicated rabbit hole!) So every time someone clicked on that phony “event” link, they got paid! In other words, they have an incentive to create these fake postings! The numerology site person was apologetic – and the scraper got banned from the click bank network. The events are still listed – but now when you click on the link, it shows the person who created that link has been banned. Hoping Google My Business gets those events off my listing next.*

*UPDATE 12/17/19: So the “affiliates” behind those phony Events listings now directed the links to go to sites that download malware. This means: those events are taking people to sites that could damage their computers/smartphones. I have been trying to get GMB’s (Google My Business) attention and one of the responses was that Google crawled the web for these Events and if I didn’t want a phony event attached to my biz, I needed to “contact the person behind the site and ask them to remove the event.” WTF?! Seriously? I’m supposed to contact a bot or malicious scraper and say “Please take this info down.” Anyhow, I had to explain to GMB that these listings are going to sites with malware and if it’s this easy to attach to someone’s GMB profile, what’s not to stop them from doing this to other businesses? Imagine this happening to a bank, famous restaurant, or other such business? Would this be acceptable? Is GMB going to simply allow this sort of exploitation in their platform? I pointed this out to the GMB people and they said they will “escalate” this with their technicians. Suffice it to say, if this flaw is allowed to continue, no business is safe in the GMB platform. Stay tuned – I am on this and determined to get GMB to see that this is a seriously risky problem. Business owners should have COMPLETE CONTROL over their information on the GMB platform without worry that some bot or person with malicious intent will try to hijack our Events for nefarious (or shitty marketing) reasons.

I’d rather be scraping this bowl.

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Events:

April 24-26, 2020: Readers Studio. I’m a main stage presenter at the annual Readers Studio Tarot Conference in New York, the biggest tarot conference in the world. Join me and other world-class instructors for a weekend of tarot goodness!

May 10-16, 2020: The Tuscany Tarot Intensive. Where: Italy! A full week of tarot immersion. The only live tarot class I plan on teaching next year. Spots are limited.

August 30, 2020: Brushes and Stars. Where: Oakland, California. A full-day of astrology and intuitive painting – and yummy food! Join me and Chris Zydel for a joyful, astrology-inspired intuitive painting experience.