dizzy_izzy

I'm not sure where to ask this but seeing how this is the questions and answers board, I thought it would be a good start. I apologize if I'm in the wrong place.

I was doing a google search of my screen name and found something very strange. on <link removed> there is a listing of all the boards on ff......including exact replicas of conversations I have had with people. At first I thought it was perhaps a backup of fanforum...but the weird thing is all the screennames have been changed. My posts are supposedly written by ArielStarr. I'm just baffled by this and was wondering if someone could shed some light on the situation.

Cereal Killer

OMG, my posts are written by clayfanforever99!!

What the hell is that forum?

Chris

Weird. I don't know anything about it, but will look into it.

Orton

What the...mine is Dolfy? that's messed up since I don't hide my real name, and I rather not have my conversations (yah know immature and all) plastered on a forum... like that?

Raonaild

Okay, that's a little creepy ... someone's taken the posts/forums from FF and used them to populate a phpBB version of our boards.

I'm going to delete the link because I don't want this board getting free advertising from us, and please don't post it around other boards, but the link is noted.

Orton

Thanks alot It is creepy.

Lain

I saw the link last night when Kate sent it and it is freaky. Some of the threads I recognized such as the "Making Jess Smile" from the OT thread And of course the s/n has been changed to something else but all the posts are the same.

Hope you'll let us know what's going on when you find out Raonalid

dizzy_izzy

I didn't even think about not posting the link...but thanks for the heads up.

If someone has stolen our boards (or whatever they have done) they should definitely be shut down.

*Natalie*

That's so creepy. I actually found one of my posts that was supposedly by SassySarah, but that post is identical to my post, verbatim.

Orton

That's weird since SassySarah was an actual poster here. She use to be my co-mod, but she doesn't come in FF anymore or as much?

dizzy_izzy

I know....that's how I originally figured out something as wrong. Google had a link directly to a conversation I had back in September on the Grey's Anatomy board. I kept reading and kept finding some significant conversations I remember having- and they were also verbatim. Basically, the entire thread was a direct copy of the one we had around here.

The only reason I was able to find the board was because when someone quoted one of my posts...the "originally posted by dizzy_izzy" was still in the post. The only change was made to the author column.


I find it mildly amusing that I have uncovered this huge scandal.

I just did a search for "ArielStarr" (who supposedly made my posts at this other place) and they were also a member on ff. Joined 7/30/03 and is apparently still making posts here. Last activity was on May 1, 2006.
Don't know if maybe this is all connected or they've been caught in the crossfire as well.

Kon-Artist

wow.. this is um.. really creepy..im not sure if i like it..

i googled my name too.. and it definitley shows lists im on and such.. and actual posts i made keeping my screen name

dizzy_izzy

I don't really like it either. At first I thought it was a backup version or something because it's from August/September....but then I noticed the author of the post was not me but someone else. The more I think about it, the more it disturbs me. It's not like it's just one thread or board that was copied, but rather all of ff is there. I don't think new posts are being made there because it seemed as though they were all from September but I didn't spend a lot of time looking around. I did look at the member list though and it seems rather sketchy. None of the names used as authors of the posts are members at that site. In fact, most of the members had the same or very similar screennames.

Kon-Artist

to make it even weirder.. it has a thread I started, linked back to the Laguna Board

is there anyway this can be fixed.. because well its creepy..i'd rather not have non FF read my posts.


oh, and if you Yahoo your name too.. it picks up some too

Raonaild

I suspect that whoever set this up just spidered all our pages and used them to fill another forum, in the hopes that the posts would get picked up by search engines and they could leech off our traffic to make themselves money through ad views.

They copied all the user info too, but however they populated their database the names and posts got mixed up. But of course they didn't really care about that anyway.

We'll look into what can be done about this, but I have seen this happen with other sites before (like Wikipedia entries for instance), and there may not be much we can do to stop it.