I ask as she has two websites registered to her – invoicefinanceadvice.co.uk and cashflow-advice.co.uk but she hasn’t provided her address details to Nominet as she claims to be non trading. Luckily I have a friend at Nominet and have pointed out to him that this person may claim to be non trading but the websites tell a different story so all will be revealed in a couple of days.
My reason for asking is that this unscrupulous rogue has started a blog on her site but instead of writing her own blog entries like most people do she has just stolen mine word for word. See for yourself at invoicefinanceadvice.co.uk/factoring/blog_files/category-lender-news.htmlÂ
I wonder how much trust one can put in a broker who is happy to steal other people’s intellectual property and pass it off as their own.
I have my suspicions but all will be revealed shortly
Ian, It’s nasty … and an idiotic way to try to get established as a broker … especially in such an niche industry! Wonder whether it’s “manual” scraping or whether the site has an auto-scrape set up from your RSS feed? If so, we’ll see your most recent post there pretty soon 🙂 Btw, I checked “whois” and the address details are there. I guess you’ve sent cease and desist emails to the individual and to the hosting company – fingers crossed that it has some effect. I’m a hobby asset finance blogger rather than a full-timer but I’d like to carry your story on my blog. Would that be ok?
Nominet have now opted in her address which is shown as 43 Lyon Oaks, Warfield, Bracknell, Bracknell Forest, RG42 2PX
There seems to be a second website at cashflow-advice.co.uk but unlike the first site this one doesn’t claim to be a member of the ABFA
Bix – our posts overlapped.
I haven’t done anything yet apart from sending them a couple of mails firstly threatening them with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and secondly to point them in the direction of this exposĂ© but neither have provoked a response.
Interestingly enough someone knows who she is as the website is little more than a lead generator for the quoting engine operated by Simply Business so obviously they must know who she is and I will contact them.
The articles published in this blog are well rated by Google which I suppose leaves me open to plagiarism by those too dishonest to try and compete on level terms.
Please feel free to write up this story on your own blog
I have done a little more detective work and by putting the site details of invoicefinanceadvice.co.uk into Copyscape it seems that apart from the blog which was stolen from me the rest of the site has been lifted word for word from a fellow factoring broker.
Their other site at cashflow-advice.co.uk has been lifted word for word from a second broker’s website so that’s three of us that they have ripped off so far.
I must re-iterate that anyone who would stoop to such tactics cannot possibly be trustworthy and this company should be avoided like the plague
It would seem that both sites have now been taken offline so the matter is almost at a close.
As a final postcript to this sordid affair I remembered the website Way Back When which logs webpages periodically over the years and it would seem that in January 2007 the website was claiming an address of PO BOX 40 Hexham, Northumberland, NE10 2HY
web.archive.org/web/20071012052857/http://www.invoicefinanceadvice.co.uk/ will show the January 2007 version of this website.
EDIT – I have spoken to the long established factoring broker in the North East whose website has been copied and he was very annoyed as the dummy Hexham address could have led people to believe that it was his firm and it most certainly has nothing to do with him at all.
As yet one more final postscript I thought I would record the fact that both of the factoring brokers who’s sites were copied thanked me for letting them know whilst my email to Kate Sharp the Chief Executive Officer of the ABFA telling them that someone was fraudulently representing themselves as members of the ABFA remains unacknowledged