WordPrexy – Cloned EVERY Single WordPress.com Hosted Blogs
by Avinash
UPDATE: There is nothing to worry about. Read the comments. It seems like my guess was correct. There wasn’t any security issue with the WordPress.com hosted blogs.
If your blog is hosted @ WordPress.com, an Automattic service, this is the time to wake up and ask the Automattic guys what is WordPrexy.
Amyth, who hosts his blog @ WordPress.com reported that there is a Turkish site, WordPrexy, that has cloned every WordPress.com hosted blogs and now showing Google AdSense ads on ‘em. Here is the original post:
While randomly blog-surfing I found this blog which said someone accidentally discovered “Wordprexy”. Basically ALL WordPress blogs (Yes, Including yours if you blog on WordPress) have a clone at Wordprexy. If you have a blog on WordPress.Com, you can probably punch in your URL and see “your” clone as well!
I punched in http://talkingtails.wordprexy.com and was surprised to see my blog on Wordprexy with some sort of a Disclaimer at the footer written in Turkish! The only difference between my WordPress blog and its clone on Wordprexy (sic!) is that the latter has Google Ads … Something I haven’t subscribed to. Basically, someone has exported ALL WordPress.com blogs and has tweaked the script to add Google Ads.. Further, Googling for “Wordprexy” again brought up some queer Turkish pages. Searching on WordPress’ internal forums and FAQs didn’t yeild anything either!Are they a bunch of hackers making money out of other peoples’ content??… I wonder!
If you’re reading this, please shed some light.. I’d be glad if you did!
After reading this post, I checked my old WordPress.com hosted blog that is in private mode and was shocked when WordPrexy redirected me to a login page. It just proved that every single blog has been copied, no matter if they’re private or public.
When I visited the WordPrexy.com site, I realized that everything that is hosted on WordPress.com has been copied, including the home page items. I tried to read the WordPrexy Terms of Service but the page wasn’t available. Then I went through WordPress.com ToS and Automattic Privacy Policy but there was no mention about WordPrexy.
As Amyth writes, every cloned blog is showing a Turkish disclaimer in the footer. If any AVINASH 2.0 reader is from Turkey, I’ll appreciate it if you translate this disclaimer found @ cloned TalkingTails blog:
Wordprexy.com: Disclaimer – Yasal
WordPrexy.com sadece WordPress.com’un icerigini yansilamaktadir. WordPrexy.com ve GreatFirewallofTurkey.com sitedeki icerikten sorumlu degildir. Bize ulasmak icin bu formu kullanabilirsiniz. Uygunsuz icerik barindiran veya hakkinda yasal olarak kapatilmasi icin bildirim yapilan adreslerin erisimi durdurulmaktadir.
As far as I can guess, the disclaimer has mentioned something about Turkey banning the whole WordPress.com site so the WordPrexy site may also be internally related to WordPress. I just want to suggest that before you start worrying about your data, please contact WordPress support to check if WordPrexy is a try to make the WordPress.com contents available to Turkish people.
If they don’t have any idea about WordPrexy, I’ll be amazed.
Related posts:
Yes,
It seems some Turkish people have cloned it in order to make WordPress available to the people located in Turkey.
I had also mailed WordPress Support about it.. and they said the same thing, they are using some sort of a Reverse Proxy to mirror content so that people in Turkey could access it.
Agreed…
The only thing that beats me is why would they put Google Ads and make revenue out of other people’s content?
true, many sites are blocked in the middle east and so proxies pop-out in order to avail the blocked site access to local people there. for eg. theres a desi board called http://www.xboard.us/bbb/ it is banned in dubai, but can be accessed via http://www.desiproject.com
cheers.
It is not hard to figure out why they have Adsense. The only real question is whether they are trying to make a profit or pay for hosting.