Our company has been cloned, what do we do?

[Cypher]

Well sort of. They are not claiming to be us, but they have stolen pretty much every photo from our actual website (www.farol.co.uk) and our social media pages and then used them to create a spoof website with what we imagine is a fake company name to rip people off.

They have gone through the trouble of photo shopping their own fake company name onto literally everything where our own name would be; the building frontage, vehicles, clothing etc. They have even put pictures of a load of our staff with fake names against them! http://www.sam-cross-farming.com/

What do we do? Who do we report it to? And more importantly how do we get it taken down asap?

[633Squadron]

Maybe report it to FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) or your local Trading Standards office? FACT may have a better chance of getting the website taken down quickly.

[heavywater]

The site is Russian, so good luck.

Looks like they've nicked employee photos from other places as well: http://dom-rol.pl/pl/kontakt https://www.jaybeeplant.co.uk/team/

[coiler]

I've seen many fraud websites, but never one with photoshop calibre on the trucks etc like that.

Have you called the number, who answers?

[danroyle]

I have encountered a similar issue. I have my website and someone has taken my businesss name and put it onto there website. So if you search for my business name you get my website and this other website. I've looked and they seem to have bought a load of domain names and linked all similar small businesses in the area to there own website.

The website has copyright 2010 on the bottom but they definitely weren't there when I set my website up two years ago. One of my customers found it six months ago and told me about it.

[cold fusion]

I'm actually impressed just how thorough they've been. Good luck getting this resolve dude

[Cypher]

The site is Russian, so good luck.

Looks like they've nicked employee photos from other places as well: http://dom-rol.pl/pl/kontakt https://www.jaybeeplant.co.uk/team/

Yer we phoned the number on the website and established that they were not Irish... Our web team are looking into it and confirmed what you said though, so good shout on that.

I'm actually impressed just how thorough they've been. Good luck getting this resolve dude

Credit where credit is due eh? They've certainly done a thorough job!

[DoubleTop]

There are a number of things at play here, I'll rush through some details.

It's research time - put simply the simplest way to get this resolved is research the directors of the firm you claim (that's an important word) has used images without your permission. Use Duedil, companies house (Ireland one of course) and get a list of directors. Then go social media hunting if you're not local - find the directors, it's simpler than you think. Use Streetview to find and call the nearest pub, all completely normal things to do to validate your evidence, conversation goes along the lines of "oh, you're just up the road from X company, does Y drink there?"

If you manage to find them, politely request they remove images due to misuse - if the site is actually them. If it is not them running the site, get friendly - because it is a lot easier for them to reclaim the domain name as they have the company name and have had since 2000 according to companies house.

You can also here check if the domain is them, with simple calls and "can I send you an email". Evidence is key - altered images are a pain, but there could be a much large scam at play here, and another important word COULD. Do not make claims on the site being a scam without reasonable cause.

And while on the note about reasonable cause, be very careful on how you word accusations (at this point that is what they are) on a public site, a few altered images is not worth the pain in time and effort having to defend your own claims, it can make things very messy.

You may think I'm overcomplicating, but I've been involved in a number of similar cases and this is the sort of lengths I had to go to in order to "recover" a domain or takedown a false site.

Hope this helps.

DT.

[BUDFORCE]

Call this guy