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4 Ways To Protect Your Online Content From Thieves

posted by Alicia in Blogging & Content

Burglar stealing a laptop
Not that long ago, I came across a website that had copied one of my blog posts without my permission.

Ouch!

It’s not the first time. In fact the site owner thought he was doing me a favour by copying it and adding a small link back to my original when what he should have done was ask me if he could use it (there are 11 ways to connect with me on my Contacts page!).

Oh wait, that takes time and effort.

Unfortunately, this happens a lot online. From people innocently copying an image from Google without realising the legalities, to the plain lazy who would rather nick stuff than spend time writing their own.

When that happens, asking the perpetrator to remove it is usually all it takes. But this can be tricky if there’s no obvious way to make contact through the offending website. (I used Twitter, naturally!).

The next step is threatening them with legal action. Yawn.

If this happens to you try and remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – don’t let it ruin your world. You need to continue doing what you do without wasting all your energy on it, despite how frustrating it can be.

Anyway, all this got me thinking about some nifty free tools that can help protect your online property and save you the hassle of trying to get it removed if someone steals it.

Here are four fast (and free) things you can do to protect your property from thieves online:

  1. Include the copyright symbol on all pages of your website and your content like e-books and PDF downloads. This will deter those who innocently think it’s ok to copy your stuff without realising it’s an infringement.

  2. Use Copyscape a duplicate content checker to search the internet for copies of your web or blog pages. You pop your page address in the search box and it will scan the web for copies. Note that it searches each page individually not a whole website.

  3. If you have a WordPress site try a plug in called WP-Copyprotect. This ‘locks’ your blog so text and images can’t be highlighted, copy and pasted. This works on the assumption that anyone wanting to steal your blog post or text from your website will be too lazy to re-type it out for themselves.

    I think it’s a pretty good deterrent although I don’t use it myself as I’m always copying text from my website to use elsewhere and this plug in would stop me from doing that!

    It may be a good solution for you if you want a hassle free way of protecting your online property.

  4. Protect your online products, photos and images using a Creative Commons license. You can get one set up in seconds for free to protect ebooks, images and other materials for that extra bit of security.

So what about you?

Do you use any of these tools? Do you have other ideas for protecting your stuff online? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

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  • 19 February 2012 by Karleen Harp

    Alicia, this is fabulous information! I belong to a professional group of resume writers who are victims of copyright infringement of their websites, samples, etc. all the time. I’ll pass your article along to them.

    • 20 February 2012 by Alicia

      Thanks for the support, Karleen – I hope it helps you and your resume friends :)

  • 19 February 2012 by Mallie Dein

    Karleen is correct. Great information. While it is flattering to think that someone somewhere found my content so compelling that it would require a quick copy/paste, it is also annoying. We all work really hard on the content we create and there are so many viable and legal ways to curate great content that the copy/paste isn’t even one of the easier methods.

    I will definitely be using Copyscape to check things out in future.

    • 20 February 2012 by Alicia

      You are right of course, and it’s hard not to let it ruin your day but in doing that you let them win.

      I’d love to know how you get on with Copyscape.

  • 19 February 2012 by Kittie Walker

    Copyscape is a great investment… small outlay for some peace of mind. The places that content turn up is extraordinary.

    Some intellectual property copy the content via RSS feed so I find that it helps to have a piece of unique content from posts set up as a Google Alert and then you find out as soon as it is indexed.

    • 20 February 2012 by Alicia

      Thanks Kittie, great tip. I’ll look into that some more – thanks for sharing your wisdom with us!

  • 20 February 2012 by Annemarie Cross

    I can totally relate to your situation Alicia. One of my competitors copied entire packages from my website. In fact, when I did a properties check on the document, my name came up. She’s even neglected to remove this. Boy oh boy. I wasn’t flattered at all. In fact the exact opposite.

    Some great tips on how to overcome this. Thanks!

    • 20 February 2012 by Alicia

      Wow Annemarie, I’m speechless!

      Did you get it sorted?

  • 20 February 2012 by Linda

    Thanks so much – I am going to re-tweet this… but not steal it!!!

    • 20 February 2012 by Alicia

      Thanks Linda. Re-tweet by all means and as often as you like :) :)

      Thanks for your support!

  • 20 February 2012 by Sandi Cornez

    Alicia, thank you for this important information. I will definitely pass this post on to my friends who will thank you for it. And I will check out the WP-copyprotect plug in and CreativeCommons.

  • 21 February 2012 by Sarah Garrison

    Thank you! I am going to start using the WordPress plugin, and I have a client that I know will love the creative commons license info. Great article I might just have to share it.

  • 21 February 2012 by Rich McElaney

    I have used copyscape to check on copywriters I’ve used in the past but I love your idea to use it as a detection tool for protecting my own content! I’ve reviewed the CreativeCommons info before but will pursue this as well.

    These are steps everyone should take to protect their content assets – thanks for the great post Alicia!

  • 22 February 2012 by Yaritza

    Thank you for sharing the information. I will be testing some of those tools soon.

  • 22 February 2012 by Jocelyn Wilhelm

    Thanks for the info. I’m using Copyscape now. Though I tried the WP Copyprotect plug-in too, but that doesn’t seem to be working.

    I don’t want all my hard work to be just copied by someone else and pass it up like it’s their own. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
    Jocelyn

    • 27 February 2012 by Alicia

      Anything to help. Thanks for stopping by :)

  • 9 March 2012 by Evelyn Salvador

    Retweeted. Thanks!

  • 11 March 2012 by Terra

    This is really helpful, thank you!!! I am going to get those plugins for my site. I do have My Copy Right, to protect my site:-) Take care, Terra

  • 9 June 2012 by Lauren Forest - The Word Perfectionist

    Hi Alicia – Thanks so much for this article! I’m a professional copywriter and this is hugely valuable information – both for my clients and the work they’ve paid me to do, as well as for myself and my own writing & online workshop content.

    I wasn’t aware of the WP-CopyProtect plug-in so THANK you for that. I’ll be recommending it to clients. AND….I’ll be re-tweeting this article!

  • 24 November 2013 by Shaan

    From long time people were stealing contents of my WordPress blog, that’s why i was looking for such kind of solution for long time. And my search end here. Thanks for writing this great article to make us aware of this great plugin.

    • 27 November 2013 by Alicia

      Sorry to hear that your content has been stolen – that sucks! Hopefully one of these solutions will suit you. Good luck!

  • 15 December 2013 by Dilip Kumar

    Nice article to come up with copying content, We can also disable right click option to prevent copying

  • 4 January 2014 by Monika

    This is perfect, very valuable information. Thank you!

  • 21 January 2014 by Simon

    I would recommend the WPCCP plugin any day! This awesome plugin has FULL text AND image protection for your WordPress sites: http://www.securiilock.com/. They also have a free version available here: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-content-copy-protection/

    • 23 January 2014 by Alicia

      thanks for the tip, Simon!

  • 29 March 2014 by Boris

    Thanks for information but how can we be sure that Google and other search engines are able to read content? There are plugins that protect content but make it unreadable for search engines.

  • 11 February 2015 by Nishith

    Thanks Alicia for this much needed information.

  • 30 May 2015 by Jim

    Alicia, thanks for this info. I’m going to use it. However, all should know that there’s really no way to protect content if it is viewable. I’m posting a link that explains it. I’m only doing this so your readers understand. Thanks so much for your great work.

    https://askleo.com/how_do_i_copy_a_copy_protected_web_page/

  • 1 August 2015 by Sujan

    bro you done well. i will try to follow your steps

    • 11 August 2015 by Alicia

      Anyone who calls me ‘bro’ is alright by me!

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