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What is shophq04.info and why are they stealing our stuff?

Updated on November 21, 2009

What is shophq04.info and why are they stealing our stuff?

Allegedly stealing.

Allegedly.

Point your browser to http://shophq04.info/. See anything familiar?

This not HubPages.com.

This is not HubPages.com. This is the home page at shophq04.info on 2009-Nov-21.
This is not HubPages.com. This is the home page at shophq04.info on 2009-Nov-21.

Here's how to to find shophq04.info

Everyone who registers a domain must provide some measure of public information. We use the site DnsStuff.com to look up domain names in order to access that public information. The link below takes you to the DnsStuff entry for shophq04.info. Unfortunately the name is registered through a company in Scottsdale Arizona called "Domains by Proxy". This company provides a service; they allow domain name owners to remain almost completely anonymous. For this service they charge $9 per domain per year. Many other companies and web hosting services provide the same service for the same price.

The bottom line is that there's no way to reach these people without a court order.

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois/?tool_id=66&token=&toolhandler_redirect=0&ip=%2Fshophq04.info

This gets even more creepy

Why are they doing this? Are they hijacking a revenue stream? We did a brief cross-check on AdSense affiliate settings. The appear to be correct. In other words, when a user clicks on an ad published on your hub that's been 'reflected' through shophq04.info, the proper author (you) will receive the royalties.

There's no guarantee that tomorrow it will still work that way.

What will Google think about this? Will Google blacklist us all for posting duplicate content? Will Google associate us with shophq04.info by tracking our affiliate IDs?


Here's comes the worse part

The HubPages login page is also duplicated here.

What are you logging in to? HubPages or shophq04.info? Who gets a copy of your password?

We didn't attempt a login here. If you have a HubPages account that doesn't mean anything to you, feel free to try it yourself. Let us know where it takes you.

This is not HubPages.com

This is not HubPages.com. It looks like HubPages.com, but it's actually a page at http://shophq04.info
This is not HubPages.com. It looks like HubPages.com, but it's actually a page at http://shophq04.info

We tried an experiment

We tried to create a new account at shophq04.info. The New Account page was visually identical to the HubPages New Account page with one significant exception: the reCAPTCHA technology was non-functional. For that reason we were unable to create the account.

This is not HubPages.com

The reCaptcha technology was not functioning properly on the New Account page at shophq04.info.
The reCaptcha technology was not functioning properly on the New Account page at shophq04.info.

Did you know abou this?

Does HubPages know about this?

working

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