I feel as bloggers we should support and look out for one another,  which is why I’m sharing this with you all tonight.

I received an email today from a very kind person letting me know that they had found my blog content on another blogspot.com site.  I was out all day and couldn’t really do much from my Blackberry.  When I got home I immediately checked out the link in full detail and sure enough over the past week nearly 20 of my posts have been copied and pasted to a blog that is full of ads and [what I can only assume to be] other people’s blog posts as well.

Out With The Old – originally posted on LH&F on 01/01/2010.

It’s The Little Things – originally posted on LH&F on 01/01/2010.

I am not providing the name or a link to the site in question because I don’t want to increase their traffic in any way. 

I know that having a blog means that my information is out there but at the same time it’s really, really creepy.  I have given permission for Haligonia.ca, Halifax.infomonkey.net and wellsphere.com to stream my posts.  This site never asked.   

This has upset me a lot because people could legitimately go to the site and think it was me, comment or even try contacting me.  It feels like impersonation,  if that makes sense.  Plus, it was so weird to see pictures of me and my family/friends on a site that I’m in no way associated with.

After a little email chat with Ang & her techie hubby, I found out this type of site is referred to as a “Splogger” AKA a Spam Blog.

You can [sometimes] easily report a Spam Blog to Blogger if they owner hasn’t disabled the tool bar across the top of the site.

 
There’s a great article here on how to report abuse if the bar has been disabled:
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2007/09/how-to-report-a-spam-blogspot.html

This article directs you to Bloggers’ Support Centre where you can report it.

Step 1:

Step 2:
 
I reported the offending site as a Spam Blog   Apparently they don’t contact you to let you know what’s happened with the site you reported.  I will keep checking back to see if Blogger eventually removes it.  They’re a gigantically reputable company, I’m sure it will get cleared up.

And it will be really interesting to see if this blog post ends up on the Spam Blog.

Please feel free to share this with other bloggers as I’m sure that I’m not the only one this has happened to.