As 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. This plugin produces fake content and links back to your site!
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.
Its really interesting to view the 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.
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.