WARNING! Content theft: Friendblab
Saw the news by way of 
cofax7, and went over to
ladyjax for the full story.
My profile and content have been stolen and reposted at this scraping, thieving 'service' too. I'd suggest checking your own.
I've sent a takedown notice as a first step, and am looking into other options.
What a way to start the day.
ETA: I also filed a note with DW support as a FYI, and got a quick response back, which I'm reposting below for general edification.
There isn't much we can do about this issue as a whole, since it appears that this site is using publicly available data feeds (such as RSS and FOAF) to fetch your content. Websites, including Dreamwidth, provide those feeds to prevent people from "screen scraping" publicly available content. It's not possible to restrict content that appears in a FOAF file, because that information can always be obtained by visiting a user's profile, but it is possible to configure how much of your entries appear in your journal's RSS/Atom feeds. To do this, go to http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=privacy and set the "Syndication Level" option to Title Only, which will mean that the RSS feed of your journal will only contain the title of your entries with a link back to the original entry. This affects everyone who uses the feed of your journal (in readers like Google Reader et al), so be sure that's what you want to do.
Sometimes sites like this do screen-scrape publicly posted information, though. Generally, the only way to make sure that nobody sees things they shouldn't is to use security levels when posting entries, and restict data on your profile to your circle only (by choosing a privacy level at http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/profile/). General information on your privacy and how to protect it can be found in http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=36 .
If the owners of the site itself or their internet hosting provider don't respond to your complaint, you may also want to contact the upstream provider of their hosting.
Best,
Denise
Thanks, DW, for being so responsive! That's good service. Unlike what the yahoos over at FriendBlab are doing.
This entry was originally posted at http://silveraspen.dreamwidth.org/279873.html and mirrored to LJ. Please comment where you wish! (There are
comments currently posted at Dreamwidth.)
cofax7, and went over to
ladyjax for the full story.
My profile and content have been stolen and reposted at this scraping, thieving 'service' too. I'd suggest checking your own.
I've sent a takedown notice as a first step, and am looking into other options.
What a way to start the day.
ETA: I also filed a note with DW support as a FYI, and got a quick response back, which I'm reposting below for general edification.
There isn't much we can do about this issue as a whole, since it appears that this site is using publicly available data feeds (such as RSS and FOAF) to fetch your content. Websites, including Dreamwidth, provide those feeds to prevent people from "screen scraping" publicly available content. It's not possible to restrict content that appears in a FOAF file, because that information can always be obtained by visiting a user's profile, but it is possible to configure how much of your entries appear in your journal's RSS/Atom feeds. To do this, go to http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=privacy and set the "Syndication Level" option to Title Only, which will mean that the RSS feed of your journal will only contain the title of your entries with a link back to the original entry. This affects everyone who uses the feed of your journal (in readers like Google Reader et al), so be sure that's what you want to do.
Sometimes sites like this do screen-scrape publicly posted information, though. Generally, the only way to make sure that nobody sees things they shouldn't is to use security levels when posting entries, and restict data on your profile to your circle only (by choosing a privacy level at http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/profile/). General information on your privacy and how to protect it can be found in http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=36 .
If the owners of the site itself or their internet hosting provider don't respond to your complaint, you may also want to contact the upstream provider of their hosting.
Best,
Denise
Thanks, DW, for being so responsive! That's good service. Unlike what the yahoos over at FriendBlab are doing.
This entry was originally posted at http://silveraspen.dreamwidth.org/279873.html and mirrored to LJ. Please comment where you wish! (There are
comments currently posted at Dreamwidth.)