
Someone cloned my website and is using it to scam people - jstanley
http://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/anonymousbtcsms-scam.html
======
anonbtcms
kevin at anonymousbtcsms.com:

This is not a scam website. I am using Coinbase to process transactions and
their platform has had a host of technical difficulties for non-usa based
customers. I have been manually updating payments for the last several weeks,
such that there maybe a few hours delay between when transactions have been
confirmed and when they are tracked on the website.

I noticed your payments several hours ago and I had already credited your
account.

While my FAQ does say no refunds, I have always provided refunds when asked.
You did not contact me about the payments not being correctly stored.

-Kevin

~~~
jstanley
Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the update, I'm glad to hear your site is legit!

I can confirm the payment is now credited in my account, although it wasn't at
the time I wrote the post.

Can you please remove the text you copied from my site?

EDIT: I've added an update at the top of the article.

~~~
franciscop
Would love to hear a timeline as well, AFAIK in these kind of situations they
are normally included. It's not as bad if someone doesn't reply in 24h as if
someone doesn't reply in 1 month.

~~~
jstanley
It was only about 3 hours, I just wrote up the post as soon as I was done with
other work today.

~~~
franciscop
"asking for the copied text to be removed, although I haven't received a reply
and no longer expect to" => so you mean you lost all hope for an answer to
your email within 3 hours? (;

~~~
jstanley
Well after my payment didn't show up, I put 2 and 2 together and concluded
(clearly incorrectly) that the site didn't actually work. :)

~~~
anonbtcms
The timing of all of this is rather unfortunate, because I am currently on a
boat on vacation with limited wifi. I have updated the copy of the website and
will continue to make changes to it in the near future.

------
lun4r
Here is Kevin's story: [https://www.kcoleman.me/2017-05-2-case-study-start-a-
saas.ht...](https://www.kcoleman.me/2017-05-2-case-study-start-a-saas.html)

"For Anonymous BTC SMS, I found my inspiration from a uk based sms provider on
Indie Hackers. I chose this idea, because I have made several SMS based apps
and I knew I could test this idea out pretty quickly. The owner of that app
also does a poor job of SEO and marketing online so I knew I could get in
front of the right people."

------
thehardsphere
Very charitable of you to assume that it's just a mistake. Not wrong
necessarily, but very charitable.

~~~
striking
If you want an airtight defense against libel, it's probably the right
position to assume.

~~~
gozur88
If you were really worried about the legal aspects you probably wouldn't
include the phrase "...and is using it to scam people" in your title.

------
CM30
Ah, this text from the scammer's site is still hilarious:

> 8\. There is nothing more critical to true success than openness, honesty
> and integrity.

> 18\. Don’t ever take credit for others' work.

Yeah, I'm sure stealing other people's work makes you an honest person.

------
cuchoi
Shouldn't a rel="nofollow" be enough to not give any "link juice" to the
webpage?

<a href="Link.html" rel="nofollow">Link</a>

~~~
daddykotex
I was not aware that one could that.

------
nydrewreynolds
His site says "Anonymously send and receive SMS messages with bitcoin. Built
during Hacker Paradise South America 2017"

Possibly just a hackathon project that was never meant to have full
functionality

~~~
mazlix
I'm friends with a founder of Hacker Paradise. I sent him a link to this post
so hopefully he can look into it asap.

~~~
caser
It seems like this was a project someone worked on during one of our trips in
the past. While he's not scamming people, it does look like he copied the text
from smsprivacy.org.

We don't have any connection to the project, but we've reached out asking him
to change / delete the copied text. Hopefully this gets cleared up shortly.

------
isubkhankulov
ironically, both websites serve predominantly scammers who need SMS to verify
with various websites to commit fraud.

~~~
dublinben
Scammers don't need to use services like this to commit fraud. They'll just
buy their own burner phones.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Unless they're in another country, or need to automate the process, or need
multiple numbers, etc.

------
slivanes
Raising a DMCA notice to their hosting provider should be one of your first
actions.

~~~
peteboyd
We just had a clients website copied (a law firm no less). We filed a DMCA
notice and the site was down within a day. It's a very powerful tool if your
work has been copied, so long as the infringing site is in the US (our owned
by a US hosting company).

~~~
meshr
It's a powerful tool if you are a law firm and your work is not very valuable,
otherwise you will receive fake counter-notification from scammer and Google
will ask you for court order.

------
ge96
I am concerned when considering developing a simple client-application to do
it server side or client side. If it's javascript someone could just copy your
source code. I don't use any libraries/frameworks right now so it would just
be pure javascript/no dependency.

I am thinking of building something and if I did it client side I could avoid
potential attacks if I'm not mistaken as no server-side storage/execution is
involved. But that concern of literally right-click save page and reupload...

The tool is a put-something-in get something out sort of deal and can be done
entirely client side with JS.

Also doesn't seem like it's anything "amazing" or "revolutionary" I just
wonder if it's so easy to steal... ehhh cross that road when you get to it.

------
s73ver
The author is far more charitable in his characterization of the scammer than
I would be. No one "accidentally" copies someone's website, and no one
"accidentally" scams someone. And a person who does that is not a good person.

~~~
anonbtcms
anonymousbtcsms here.

This is not a scam website. As I stated in my previous comment, we are having
issues with our integrations with Coinbase. Because I have been out of the
USA, they refuse to service my support tickets.

I am in the process of moving over to Bitpay, but I have not had the bandwidth
recently to tackle that project so I have manually been entering in payments
as I see them. As a result, the payments wont be registered for multiple
hours.

Any customers that have not been happy with the service have been refunded
upon request. I wish OP had contacted me directly about the payments not
registering.

~~~
djrogers
Glad to hear it's not a scam, but why did you steal basically the entire site
content and concept from another website? How does that square with your 'law'
#18. Don’t ever take credit for others' work. ?

------
siliconc0w
Whois their IP and grab their Host/ISP. Contact their abuse address describing
the IP theft. ISPs need to have well defined processes to deal with these
complaints or they risk damaging their upstream relationships.

~~~
meshr
It doesn't work for real valuable IP because we don't have Internet court and
even in obvious cases only real court can tell who is 'IP theft'. So creators
have to spend a lot of time/money to prove obvious things while the scammer
can change providers easily to DMCA resistant one.

------
fapjacks
Interesting. I have a side project exactly like this. I created it after I saw
the need for this myself. I've never bothered to check the internet for
competing services, but this kinda motivates me.

------
dvt
A few years ago, this happened to me as well. I filed a DMCA complaint with
their hosting company and in a few days, the offending website was down.

~~~
meshr
You are lucky. In my case I received fake DMCA counter-notification from
scammer and Google/FB asked me to go to court.

------
RIMR
Just so I understand: You're just leveraging Twilio, and then upcharging the
shit out of people for paying with BTC, correct?

------
lun4r
This post was published tomorrow?

