30

Following searching various things for this question, I found:

http://askubuntu.greatknow.com/questions/294850/does-canonical-have-other-deals-with-companies-like-the-amazon-search-feature

which seems like a mirror copy of:

Does Canonical have other deals with companies like the Amazon search feature?

Now this makes me thing of 4 things:

  • Is this site here to do harm? (e.g. a SE user signs in through it and gets their account nicked)
  • Isn't there copyright infringement stuff that might cause issue?
  • Is it affiliated with Ubuntu / Stack Exchange anyway?
  • Any advertising making money from our content?

I have in the past found various weird sites that contain shortened versions of Stack Exchange questions/answers and link to the main post (e.g. this site), this is the first that seems to be trying to copy it exactly..

At the bottom it links to http://photoemblem.greatknow.com/ http://pasteubuntu.greatknow.com/

http://www.greatknow.com/ appears to be some weird Q&A site.

It also updates to keep up-to-date with the current site. Compare http://askubuntu.greatknow.com/questions & https://askubuntu.com/questions, then panic.

22
  • 1
    Looking into this...
    – Shog9
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 1:12
  • 1
    Man, that is so realistic it's scary! This is no ordinary scraper.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 1:15
  • 3
    Wow. Yeah, that's scary.
    – jrg Mod
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 2:33
  • Most of the CSS and stuff couldn't be ripped off, only the text, it seems.
    – qedk
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 17:15
  • 1
    OpenID is the only way to log in.
    – qedk
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 17:16
  • @therewillbecoffee - there is enough for it to be a effective copy. I haven't tried looking at the login as I assume that would not be a very good idea...
    – Wilf
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 17:57
  • 1
    @Shog9 It also appears to reflect new content within about 5-10 seconds of new content being posted here.
    – Jason C
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 8:29
  • @JasonC - wow didn;t notice that (will add to question) - it must being using the StackExchange APIs
    – Wilf
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 12:05
  • Looks like the SE team was victorious.
    – Jason C
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 15:41
  • 1
    @JasonC nice :D. I will add ubuntu's pastebin isn't.... pasteubuntu.greatknow.com
    – Wilf
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 17:05
  • 1
    Photoemblem is not theirs either, I've notified photoemblem's staff through their real site. At a glance, everything on that site is either spam or scraped content.
    – Jason C
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 17:33
  • 1
    @JasonC - looks like it. I have used the contact form here to notify canonical as well.
    – Wilf
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 17:38
  • 2
    I call shenanigans. When I access this site I get the message The owner of this website (askubuntu.com) has banned your IP address but the ip address it states clearly isn't my ip address.
    – Michael Lindman
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 9:23
  • 2
    @MichaelLindman indeed. The IP is just written in the HTML (i.e doesn't change with each visitor) <p> The owner of this website (askubuntu.com) has banned your IP address (104.156.49.140). </p>
    – Jamie Twells
    Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 22:20
  • 1
    prntscr.com/6gh1i4 -- Even my antimalware on Windows hates it.
    – Kaz Wolfe
    Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 0:30

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
22

If you open your browser in privacy mode that site will start to open tabs and do all sorts of ads.

For Ubuntu you can report things like that here:

Here are instructions for reporting scrapers to SE:

10
  • Alright I will report as detailed on meta SCRAPER reporting page (both via contact form (thought from the comments it might be known about anyway)). By the way I found it by googling stackexchange deal canonical ubuntu (link here, for me it was the 6th result).
    – Wilf
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 11:25
  • 4
    We're going to give this a little extra 'special' attention because it's just outright egregious.
    – Tim Post Staff
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 3:49
  • 7
    Just to confirm, we asked our lawyers to have everyone associated with that awful thing fed to the sarlaac and THEN frozen in carbonite, to serve as a warning to others. (They've got to find 'em first, but you should know the wheels are in motion.)
    – Jaydles Staff
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 14:41
  • 5
    ...and just for good measure, we took some actions on the technical side, too. (try the link to see em.)
    – Jaydles Staff
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 15:08
  • @Jaydles - works here - well done!
    – Wilf
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 17:50
  • 8
    @Jaydles askubuntu.com.80bola.com ?
    – bain
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 19:11
  • @bain Report that site as described above. I did not see how the site looked that is described in the original Question, but this one is really identical looking to our one.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 8:37
  • @Jaydles Don't want to play the devil's advocate here, but the only things they are doing wrong are: a) not linking to the original source, b) using trademarks without permission. They could get around that and pop up as a different, comparable site. This really, really is an issue for new users.
    – don.joey
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 8:10
  • 4
    @don.joey, the original link from the post ("greatknow") is a LOT worse than that. They're using content created by folks like you to trick users clicking links into installing all kinds of crapware. We respond to trademark issues to protect them, but straight up proxies don't bother us much philosophically, as long as users aren't tricked or taken advantage of. Those guys are doing bad stuff.
    – Jaydles Staff
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 13:57
  • @bain Jesus, that site is dangerous, it managed to replace most of my awesomebar default favorites after visiting a few of the fake "network" links on that site. We should all report that one!
    – Kzqai
    Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 16:53

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .