Internet Fraud

Today became a challenge when I discovered a jerk had copied my web page including video and changed the contact box to divert people to his affiliate link. To say I was miffed would be a major understatement. I feel violated.

Warning: If you have ever been scammed or had your identity stolen, you understand the frustration. Am I going to let the creep get away with it? Absolutely not.

First step was to go to my beloved Google and type in “report phishing.” For those who may not be familiar with the term phishing, I have included the Wikipedia definition.
“In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging,[1] and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users,[2] and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies.[3] Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.
A phishing technique was described in detail in 1987, and the first recorded use of the term "phishing" was made in 1996. The term is a variant of fishing,[4] probably influenced by phreaking[5][6] or password harvesting fishing, and alludes to baits used to "catch" financial information and passwords.”
Other terms to type in the search engine are “report fraud,” “report phishing scam,” or “internet fraud.” The websites which I discovered to report this type of not only plagiarism but outright fraud are www.USA.gov (internet fraud), www.IC3.gov, www.US-cert.gov/nav/report-phishing.html, and www.Google.com/safebrowsing/report-phish.
Yes, I filed all of the reports in order to prevent illegal and unethical people like this from harming other innocent people. I also filed a complaint with the FTC.
Another thing you can do in order to locate the individual or company illegally using your web site is to type in http://whois.domaintools.com Then add a /and the name of the url (url is the uniform resource locater better known as the website address or website name) showing for the fraudulent use of your website. In this case, I typed in http://whois.domaintools.com/makemoneywithelaine.com.
No surprise that it did not exist. In fact, he had an ad posted to sell the url to me for $295.00. Since I could not locate him through that source, I typed in his affiliate link name http://whois.domaintools.com/Web_Biz_ Kit.com
This revealed 182 records on the “whois” file since 2000 and 751 other sites hosted on his server and 174 other domains registered to Mike Gleissner or one of his many other aliases. He listed addresses in different states – mostly California and New York. Not surprising that the address he listed is not valid, nor is the telephone listed valid or the email addresses he used valid.
Huge thank you to Chris Hickman, my pay per click mentor who discovered the fraudulent site and reported it to me. Yes, there are honest, ethical people out there. However, there are also creeps who prey on honest business people.
Contact me and I’ll keep you posted on protecting yourself.