BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 / fanfiction.net stories stolen - (spamdex mirror sites)

**Posted by Harriet** February 9, 2016 8:00 am

"Dear fanfiction writers,
Please be aware that there are fake websites which have mirrored literally ALL FANFICS from Fanfiction.net. As far as I can tell, they are near-perfect mirrors, updating in real-time to FFN’s servers."

I don't know if yours are affected, you might want to check.

Description and advice to be found here:
http://johix.tumblr.com/post/138952341850

Last edited by Harriet (February 9, 2016 5:57 pm)

**Posted by Ivy** February 9, 2016 8:22 am

Oh thanks for that information, I don't write fanfiction, but I'll definitely reblog this on tumblr.

**Posted by Harriet** February 9, 2016 8:24 am

I have read only on tumblr about it, so if fanfiction.net writers can confirm the thing here, that would be helpful, too

**Posted by This Is The Phantom Lady** February 9, 2016 8:58 am

Damnit. They stole mine!!

Thank you for the headsup

**Posted by nakahara** February 9, 2016 11:59 am

What profit can they have from such theft, I wonder?
It would never occur to me that somebody would be willing to steal whole fanfiction nets...

**Posted by This Is The Phantom Lady** February 9, 2016 12:58 pm

The sites has click adds... if you try to click something on the site to read the story you get an add pop up... which the thieves then get paid for...

GRRR.

**Posted by gently69** February 9, 2016 1:23 pm

I only use AO3. That method seems to be profitable.

**Posted by Yitzock** February 9, 2016 2:16 pm

Yikes! Well, I think I might be never uploading anything to FF.net again...I've always liked it, and I'll probably still read stuff there, but I really don't want this to keep happening, because I looked up one of my old crossovers on one of those sites is there...I don't know whether I'll transfer the old ones to my AO3 or not since so far AO3 is only the Sherlock stuff I've written but....this is just not cool, but I never knew any of them existed, on the bright side, so I don't know how much traffic these even get.

**Posted by Harriet** February 9, 2016 5:54 pm

This Is The Phantom Lady wrote:
The sites has click adds... if you try to click something on the site to read the story you get an add pop up... which the thieves then get paid for...

GRRR.

That's the reason - and if a person is searching for a certain story via google, she/he may be misled to one of those pages since it will appear among the search results. So the story will be used as a bait

**Posted by Harriet** February 9, 2016 8:31 pm

There are rumours that also malware is spread via some mirror links.

**Posted by Yitzock** February 9, 2016 8:42 pm

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

**Posted by This Is The Phantom Lady** February 9, 2016 9:47 pm

It sadly doesn't shock me either

Damn, this feels as bad as when I found out a former online 'friend' posted one of my stories online and claimed they were hers,almost 10 years ago... And despite me having concrete evidence she denied it... claiming she never said she wrote it... maybe, but she did say 'thank you so much' etc to every comment on my work.

**Posted by Ivy** February 9, 2016 9:56 pm

@PhantomLady: Oh wow that's plagiarism. I mean you don't make money from it but it's your work. That would make me so angry and it's your word against her's, other people might think you are the one who stole it.

**Posted by Harriet** February 13, 2016 10:47 pm

bump