Stop RSS Feed Scraping with AntiLeech WordPress Plugin
March 27th, 2008As I switched to full feeds, concerned about feed scrappers republishing our copyrighted content, lots of helpful readers shared their views and thoughts about the issue and how to deal with it. This helped me find some WordPress plugins that can help you effectively deal with RSS scrappers.
I read this excellent article about how to deal with content theft and RSS scraping by Jonathan Bailey and decided to start dealing with a my current feed scrappers using the AntiLeech Wordpress Plugin.
AntiLeech does not prevent the splogger bots from accessing your site. It produces a fake set of content especially for them that includes links back to your site (and mine, too, ok?) and sends it only to them. When they steal this content, it appears online just like normal, except now you’ve turned the tables on them and have provided them with useless content.
You can configure many more options to prevent certain User-Agents and IP addresses from stealing your content via RSS.
Block RSS Feed Scraping and Content Theft
How did it work? Great. As soon as I published a previous post, the splog was instantly pinged and republished our post in full. I instantly got a trackback ping to the scrapped url in my wordpress comments section. I noted the IP address from the trackback and blocked IP number in the AntiLeech Wordpress Plugin options. Then when I published the next article, the next scrapped article was total rubbish.
See example of Antileech rubbished url below
http://info2u.890m.com/1/?p=2322
See the interesting way in which this plugin filled the scrapper content with rubbish text, removing all useful content, putting in a warning about feed republishing without permission and providing lots of free linkbacks with lots of corrupted code to end with.
Did this site obtain admin’s permission to re-publish this content? No!
Visit Install Windows Vista SP1 Confidently with Free Unlimited Support at Quick Online Tips to get the actual content of this post, or to ask for permission to redistribute that content.
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Protect your WordPress content from theft with the AntiLeech plugin, written by Owen, and provided for free.
function alAddLoadEvent(func) {if ( typeof alOnload!=”function”){alOnload=func;}else{ var oldonload=alOnload;alOnload=function(){oldonload();func();}}}alAddLoadEvent(function() {var ifr = document.getElementsByTagName(”iframe”);for(var i in ifr)i.src = “about:blank”;});
My experience with AntiLeech Wordpress Plugin has been great and I have blocked a few more IP’s who regularly scrap our content. There are more plugins to block RSS feed scrappers like CopyFeed and Digital Fingerprint Plugin. Now I can stay with full feeds with confidence and no fears of duplicate content. Stop your feed scrappers now and protect your original copyright content.
Update: See example of this very article blocked by AntiLeech
http://info2u.890m.com/1/?p=2326
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Plugins like this are going to become more and more important as we go forward and sploggers get more and more innovative with the way they try to steal other bloggers content. I installed this almost immediately and I hope others do as well.
Glad it worked for you and that is very cool the link to the spam blog. I had not seen Antileech in action (I use FeedBurner and uncommon uses, having started before Antileech was available) I am going to have to mention this in my presentation on Saturday.
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks Jonathan for pointing out this wonderful plugin. I wish I could have found it earlier.
Hi,
Upon reading your article, I installed this software and now, I’m not able to read my own feeds!!!
Also, I’ve defined I.P. addresses of the sites which are scraping my content.
But it seems, all my efforts are in vein, as my content is still being copied effortlessly on other sites :(
Please advice.
In the options I have checked “Do not insert the AntiLeech image for detecting leechers into feed output.” which was not checked by default. Try it.
Are you using any other plugin to modify your feed, it may be conflicting with that.
After unchecking a certain option, I’m able to read my feeds now!
I use the “more” option in all my articles, due to which, the feeds were getting published partially. So in order to publish full feeds, I’m using a plugin (i think I saw that plugin on this site only) and mayb that is conflicting with this software :(
I’ll give it a go for another couple of days and then if it don’t work out, I will have no option but to publish my feeds partially as I just can’t afford to let other people make money on my hard work!
Thanks for your help.
I am also using the full text feed plugin, but that does not conflict for me.
Can you let me know if you downloaded the file from that link you had provided? I tried to download and I am getting a corrupted file. Can you let me know in what file format is it downloading?
Joel, it works for me. The file is in .zip format.
Sorry for not making it clear earlier…I actually meant the file within the zip folder…When I downloaded there was no file format associated with it. I opened in different text editors and it was all garbage values and I also renamed it to php and still it was not working…
It has a antileech.php file which opens ok in Wordpad for me.
I think I’ll try it, Michael said right, sploggers get more and more innovative with the way they try to steal other bloggers content.
please add our website
Thanks, im still using copy feed. Im gonna try it.
hope it work… by the way thanks.
Hello, I was wondering if you could provide the anti-leech plugin for download. The one on their site is corrupted or something.
Thanks.
Dustin
Does these plugins still works? some says they will just ruin your RSS? please enlighten me..
Thanks