My company's site: http://www.metvong.com

We found this other website today http://www.vinhinfo.com/ which has somehow completely copied our website. Everything works even the search functionality. The link all lead to their own website even though they are feeding it from ours somehow.

I tried logging in to the copy (vinhinfo.com) and it forwarded me to metvuong.com. But once I pressed "back" I was actually logged into vinhinfo.com and the vinhinfo.com site could pull up my user information. I know they have not hacked our database, so they must be relaying all of the data being sent to their site to our site.

I have 2 questions.

1. How are they doing this?
2. How can I stop it?

Thanks in Advance

1 - They're probably "scraping" your site with an automated spider. Your site isn't loading for me, so I can't check to see whether you have an RSS feed. That's the preferred way to take someone else's content.

2 - Take a look at these stock take-down letters. It doesn't look like the offending site is hosted in the US, but you can still write search engines to avail yourself of your rights under dmca. You might start by contacting the site in question, though.

They're probably "scraping" your site with an automated spider.

That's what it sounds like to me, too. I was working with a programmer a few months ago who turned out to be crooked and he had some software that could harvest complete web sites. He tried to sell it off to me as "back up software". It backed up alright; took entire sites including outbound links that were in the site.

It looks as if they actually pointed their domain at our server. We wrote some code in our header include file to stop them from doing this. Is there any server setting that we can set to make sure it doesn't happen?

The only thing I can think of to help is a complete IP ban of the user or site. The problem with this is: 1.) IP address (unless static.) will change ever couple of months. 2.) They could be using (or start using) IP masking software. 3.) They could simple change computers.

Problems 1 & 2 can be handled by their ISP. You can request that an ISP restrict a certain connection from accessing your site. This means, even if their IP address changes or they use software, they can't access your site. However, ISP are not very compliant without court orders.

I know this isn't very helpful, but I am not sure of anything you can really do to secure your site.

First off, the correct site is metvuong.com, not metvong.com .

Secondly, if this is a hack, it's a pretty bad one. It is theoretically possible that they're scraping your site and putting their own links in..but that's highly unlikely since both vinhinfo.com and metvuong.com point to the same IP address (210.
145.125.205).

What's odd about this is that both domains have similar name servers.

metvuong.com:

NS35.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS36.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIsVerify.a...rog_id=godaddy

vinhinfo.com:

NS39.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS40.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIsVerify.a...rog_id=godaddy

So they're obviously on similar name servers, and likely it's at the name server end that the IP was assigned. In other words, you're not being scraped...you're being mirrored, as you suggested.

Here's the real interesting thing...domaincontrol.com is owned by "Special Domain Services, Inc." Here's their address:

14455 N Hayden Rd #219
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
4806242500 Fax -- 4805058844

The more astute among you will recognize the address as that of GoDaddy...which means that you both share a registrar and a host.

If metvuong.com has a dedicated IP address, there probably isn't a lot you can do about it except maybe to get off the GoDaddy hosting (if you're on it)....that's assuming you're telling the truth.

And as of this morning (this didn't turn up last night), here's why I think you're full of crap (from www.vinhinfo.com):

en.metvuong.com
Met Vuong is the premier Vietnam real estate portal. Met Vuong is a fast and easy way to find houses, apartments, and land for sale and to rent. Met Vuong is also the fastest and easiest way to sell your property.
Looking to sell or lease your property? Listing your property with MetVuong is the fastest and easiest way to find renters and buyers. Plus, MetVuong is completely FREE!

www.metvuong.com
Mét Vuông là công ty hoạt động về lĩnh vực bất động sản chuyên cung cấp các thông tin về mua bán nhà đất như nhà bán, nhà cho thuê, các dự án, dịch vụ, các tin tức, sự kiện mới nhất...
Bạn đang muốn bán hay cho thuê nhà đất? Đăng bất động sản của bạn tại Mét Vuông là cách nhanh nhất và dễ dàng nhất để tìm ngay người muốn mua hay thuê. Không những vậy, đăng thông tin nhà đất tại Mét Vuông là hoàn toàn MIỄN PHÍ!

Seems to me like what we have here is a dirtbag landing page bait and switch tactic. In other words, we have a cleverly disguised spammer using multiple domain names.

woah: Case Closed. lol