Tygpress.com

Fandango

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Teresa, at The Haunted Wordsmith, wrote out a post (which is no longer available as she took down her blog) a few days ago about a website that is harvesting the blog posts of many WordPress bloggers. That is, this site, tygpress.com, is likely posting on its site your posts without your authorization, approval, or permission.

You can check to see if this is happening to your posts by going to tygpress.com and typing your name or your blog’s name, or the title of one of your posts, or your blog’s URL in the search bar (see image above). Then scroll down to see if your posts are showing up on that site.

I did this and I found not only my own posts being published on that site, but the posts of many of you who follow my blog and who have responded to any of my prompts.

The hosting site for tygpress.com is Digital Ocean, and there is a site you can go to to report that your posts are being harvested by tygpress.com without your permission: https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/#abuse

I don’t know if it will do any good, but I did it and at least it made me feel better knowing I did something.

93 thoughts on “Tygpress.com”

  1. Christine Bolton August 2, 2019 / 6:18 am

    I see my work there, and yours Fandango and just about everyone else in our sharing groups 😔

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
      • Christine Bolton August 2, 2019 / 12:47 pm

        I have a simple question. As we are all subscribers to WordPress shouldn’t we all be telling them that we’ve all been hacked?

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply
        • Fandango August 2, 2019 / 2:52 pm

          Apparently some have and WordPress says it can’t do anything about it.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply
          • Christine Bolton August 2, 2019 / 3:04 pm

            I did online chat with them just now and this was the tail end of it. Seems they should be. When you actually click on one of your posts on Tygpress.com it is like looking at a carbon copy of Reader, that why I reached out to them today. Here is the end of the conversation

            WP. Possibly. Though I’m quite curious about this myself now.
            It looks like it is grabbing content from the WordPress.com reader.
            I’ve search for self-hosted WordPress sites…
            but nothing.

            So only WordPress.com sites are showing up.

            ME. That’s what I thought. As I said it is a mirror image of the WP reader and I was hoping you might be able to stop this somehow

            WP. Yeah. This is what I’ll do.
            I’ll bring this up to the powers that be here at WordPress.com and see if they can confirm what this site is doing, and…
            no promises, and this can take a long time…
            have some “friends” over at DO and see what they can do.

            ME. I understand but I thought you should know. Your customers might start to get upset. An email to everyone might help to allay any fears. DO??? Whats that?

            WP. Sorry, Digital Ocean. I’m hoping someone here knows someone there.

            ME. So you know this company DO?

            WP. They are a very popular web hosting company.

            ME. Not today, they’re not! I would appreciate it if you would pass on this to those in charge and hopefully get some resolution for us. Thanks for listening. I will do what I can with Google as well

            WP. Sure thing. If they truly are just scraping the WordPress.com Reader feed (which it does) I don’t think our management would take this lightly.

            Fingers crossed. You never know.

            Liked by 8 people

            Reply
            • Fandango August 2, 2019 / 4:55 pm

              Thanks for doing this. I hope they will take action.

              Liked by 1 person

            • Christine Bolton August 2, 2019 / 5:31 pm

              Yes once he saw that it looked just like the Reader he seemed a little more concerned 😦

              Liked by 1 person

  2. aguycalledbloke August 2, 2019 / 6:36 am

    Mm, l also see myself over there. Good heads up Fandango 🙂 Will reblog this.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  3. newepicauthor August 2, 2019 / 8:04 am

    I think that I will ignore this, as my blogs are just words. They are words grouped together by me, but I don’t see any harm in anyone else reading them. If I ignore this site and everyone else ignores it, then it may stop them from perpetuating this harmless crime.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • aguycalledbloke August 2, 2019 / 10:10 am

      For me – l can see two sides to this, but just because l can doesn’t make TygPress any less guilty of theft, but the other thing this encroaches upon is an invasion of our rights and choice – if we choose to allow people to share is one thing, but this isn’t about asking permission. It is a form of invasive marketing without permission. They didn’t have my permission to do this, they never asked me if l was okay about this and whilst l can see my posts leading back to me, my blog and my space – they still didn’t ask. Is this not something also to do with GDPR to a certain degree.

      Because if that’s not a problem, then why are we so annoyed with the likes of Facebook for that big scandal – the point is about us granting permission for them to use our content in other locations, from their point of view on the surface they have allowed viewers of their site to link from them back to us. But from what l can gather they are a 13 month old site that makes x amount of $ a day to harvest from bloggers like us – so in essence making money from your words, my words, everyone’s words.

      Simply put they are making money from our sites, they are harvesting off us literally.

      That’s not on.

      Liked by 9 people

      Reply
  4. Melanie B Cee August 2, 2019 / 8:42 am

    Well heck. That really pisses me off. I agree with Jim that the blogs ‘are just words’, but to ME? They are intellectual property too. And I have things on mine that are going to be used in a book or other published item, and those publishing people PAY. If T-whatever wants to use the blogs as content for their site, they might ask. That would be the polite thing to do.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply
    • Melanie B Cee August 2, 2019 / 11:11 am

      FYI I contacted that site you listed to lodge a complaint and I got the following message from them:

      “Thank you for your submission. A member of the Trust & Safety team will review the details as soon as possible. If appropriate, the information will be forwarded to the associated customer in its entirety.

      As we are an unmanaged cloud hosting provider, we do not create, administer, or have direct access to our customers’ Droplets. This means that we cannot make direct changes to any programs or websites hosted there.

      Additionally, our internal policies do not allow us to share information about the customer with third parties without a signed US court order compelling us to do so. ”

      Basically (to me anyway) it says “Too bad, so sad. Must suck to be YOU.” 😡

      Liked by 6 people

      Reply
        • Melanie B Cee August 2, 2019 / 2:44 pm

          I’m sorry. I’ve begun to bug WordPress about it AND I added a “terms and conditions” page and a copywritten material portion, as well as an intellectual property clause. If it gets to a lawsuit, those will be helpful.

          Liked by 5 people

          Reply
  5. Cyranny August 2, 2019 / 9:05 am

    I’m in there too, Grrrrr! I am on Digital Ocean’s site, but I am not sure about the abuse type… What did you report this as?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  6. inkdropk August 2, 2019 / 9:17 am

    Spotted my own work on here – seems there’s a touch of Data Mining going on at Digital Ocean….

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  7. pensitivity101 August 2, 2019 / 9:26 am

    Reblogged this on pensitivity101 and commented:
    Just in case anyone is anxious, Fandango has given you a starting point. Thanks Fandango, reblogging
    At least reblogging a post acknowledges the writer, and so far my posts on this site have pensitivity101 on them. I’ve put my copyright notice on the front on my blog now so it can be read without going into a separate page.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply
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  11. King Ben's Grandma August 2, 2019 / 9:54 am

    Reblogged this on King Ben's Grandma and commented:
    Heads up everyone! This site has even published MY stuff and we all know how low profile my blog is. Check it out and file a complaint.
    With WordPress we get a notification if someone reblogs our content. This site is just stealing.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  12. blindzanygirl August 2, 2019 / 11:04 am

    Will Reblog this too Fandango. Found lots of my stuff on there, even stuff I only posted a few hours ago. Thanks to Teresa and yourself Fandango

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  13. blindzanygirl August 2, 2019 / 11:04 am

    Reblogged this on .

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
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  15. Christine Bolton August 2, 2019 / 12:35 pm

    I’ve noticed several random blogs (mostly overseas, it seems) have also used random poetry from various bloggers but have always linked back to us. The content of these so called ‘blogs’ belongs completely to other writers. Whoever these people are they just seem to want a blog but not write anything themselves. Sounds like AI to me, or something worse 😳

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  17. myplace3187 August 2, 2019 / 1:14 pm

    I saw my work on there and filled out a complaint message for them. I agree that it is our property and we own the copyright to our blogs. No one has the right to use any or part of my blog or blogs with out permission from me.

    I wonder if there is a way we can stop this theft by putting pressure on wordpress ? They should have to know about this taking place do they not ? Please if anyone has an answer besides us leaving a compliant on Digitalocean’s site ?

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply
    • Melanie B Cee August 2, 2019 / 2:41 pm

      I contacted WordPress and just heard back from a Happiness Engineer who told me that WordPress cannot (read will not) do anything about external sites doing those sorts of unethical actions. I wanted to block Tygpress from accessing any of my content and WordPress doesn’t allow one to do that. I told her that I thought it was a breach of WordPress security and WordPress ought to address that or lose some consumers.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply
      • myplace3187 August 2, 2019 / 7:57 pm

        Thank you Melanie B Cee for doing this as we all have to force them to stop or allow us to block tygpress. You are right about everything you say. Thanks again !

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply
  19. myplace3187 August 2, 2019 / 1:18 pm

    I just reblogged this to my blog. Maybe the more bloggers who know of this theft of our property than we can force wordpress.com or Digitalocean to stop allowing this to go on.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  21. Melanie B Cee August 2, 2019 / 2:41 pm

    I don’t even use DigitalOcean and had never heard of them OR Tygpress until today. It’s discouraging.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  22. Laura M Bailey August 2, 2019 / 3:13 pm

    Well yep. I’m there too! As well as Bushboys world, Proscenium, balancing life with jovita, feel purple…etc. virtually everyone who’s even mentioned my blog name, is there!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  23. Jen Goldie August 2, 2019 / 7:58 pm

    I filled out the form at the Ocean link. Told them about how proud I was to be Canadian and how disgusted I was with them. Dunno if it’ll do any good.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  25. Jen Goldie August 2, 2019 / 8:07 pm

    They say they need a US court order

    Thank you for your submission. A member of the Trust & Safety team will review the details as soon as possible. If appropriate, the information will be forwarded to the associated customer in its entirety.

    As we are an unmanaged cloud hosting provider, we do not create, administer, or have direct access to our customers’ Droplets. This means that we cannot make direct changes to any programs or websites hosted there.

    Additionally, our internal policies do not allow us to share information about the customer with third parties without a signed US court order compelling us to do so.

    Regards,

    Trust & Safety
    DigitalOcean Support

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  27. leigha66 August 2, 2019 / 11:08 pm

    Wow… there I was in black and white. How can they do that? At least they still credit us and do link back to WordPress but still. Kind of scary.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
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  30. Sakshi August 3, 2019 / 5:42 am

    Reblogged this on I refuse to give up and commented:
    Please check if your work has been lifted . I could see many of your posts there and some have their entire sites lifted. Mine isn’t there but please spread the word…….. It might help others

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  31. padresramblings August 3, 2019 / 6:02 am

    Not that it will make much a difference, but I have started to place the statement: “Reposting by Tygpress.com not authorised,” on some of my posts. It may not stop them, but it will make for interesting reading on their site if we all did it.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  32. John Holton August 3, 2019 / 6:52 am

    Someone figured out that their domain is registered through GoDaddy. Might want to complain to them, too. I didn’t find anything out there from my blog (and I can’t help but feel a little insulted), but if I stumble across anything I’ll let everyone know.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
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  38. theresaly520 August 4, 2019 / 7:34 am

    Found all of my posts on there – Sent email to Digital Ocean. Can the WordPress platform allow to IP ban users?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Fandango August 4, 2019 / 10:09 am

      I am not sure that WordPress can do anything about sites that harvest our posts, unfortunately.

      Like

      Reply
  39. Maggie August 4, 2019 / 8:59 am

    Reblogged this on From Cave Walls and commented:
    …

    Reblogging another post on the unauthorized reproduction of our blogs. It appears to possibly be taken from WordPress Reader. WordPress has been contacted but I would still complain to the web-hosting company. Self-hosted sites may not be impacted.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
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