Has Your Website Copy Been Stolen?

There has been quite a lot of talk this week on a VA forum that I belong to. One of the VAs has had her web copy stolen - the perpetrator quite literally copied and pasted this VA's web copy into their own website and passed it off as their own!

Whilst the very nature of the world wide web makes it nigh on impossible to stop this happening (after all there are so many websites out there that plagiarist probably think you'll never find out!) you can be proactive to ensure that you are not a victim of plagiarism - after all, why should someone else benefit from your hard work?

The first step in combating plagiarism is to go to Copyscape and check that no-one else is using your web copy. You simply enter your URL and Copyscape will check all online sites for copy that is either very similar to yours or exactly the same. You can then go and check it out for yourself to see if someone has stolen your web copy. I did this and found everything was okay.

If you do find that someone has stolen your web copy then contact them immediately and ask them to remove the information.

A VA colleague has posted a very good article detailing what you should do in the event that someone has stolen your web copy. You can read about it here:

Your Content Without Consent: How to Guard Against Internet Plagiarism