with thanks to jpakotal for highlighting this in Tech Issues, but apparently there's a site out there which is just copying wholesale FT, changing our names and amending what we have written slightly, so it's not such an obvious steal

I presume they are doing it to generate views for advertising or to harvest e-mail addresses

It's weird, I looked at the first few posts in the thread there about fuel surcharges. They have been largely copied from ORP here but words have been changed, and some left out. I don't think that form of editing would be entirely mechanical, it had to be done by someone manually with some knowledge of the English language.

To quote the great Stevie Wonder, "Very superstitious!"

Also discussed here.

I suspect that it was sent into a program like Babelfish to be translated into a foreign language and then re-translated into English. That is the most probable explanation for how ridiculous the rewrites were.

Thanks all for the update. In checking with Mikel, we did contact Internet Brands regarding this Web site back in July. Either they had no luck in tracing the ownership to shut down or it got lost in translation - pun intended. Anyway, Mikel has been alerted to again raise this issue with them on today's tech call with them.

It is always a great feeling that many of our members look after FlyerTalk and again thanks for the update.

Very strange effort, those tripfly folks.

Are the Nexus machines only accessible at US pre-room toilet in Canada?

Like spam one has to wonder who would be attracted by this gibberish, but the answer is in gross traffic & ad hits.

I would suggest also working with Google & other major search engines to get them de-indexed & get their AdSense account closed: ca-pub-3802971163687208

Sites like this exist only to scrape other people's content & derive ad revenue from it.

This is my favorite thread: check out the list of attendees.

Hi, KathyWaldorfAstoria!


==
I wrote in a thread entitled "Foreign Tipping Guide by Country Region":

Follow the money. Follow Digg and del.icio.us and StumbleUpon to see who looks after FlyerTalk. @:-)

hilarious

I had to also check in a thread that I follow: (from the W Seattle thread)

"I stayed at the W Seattle this weekend and was recongized as Golden at nonplus-in ("We have your Golden membership here on your qualification, so we have you on a upper Nautical."). Ethical to be on the unscathed side, I asked if delinquent perusal-out was possibe and the answer was, "Of progress! Would 4PM be OK?" Our chamber was pleasant, no static with thin/greying lineage or lineage as others aware in the done, and because we were on a superior flatten, we could seize glympses of the Coarse Angels execution their air show. The area advantage was right too, they have masterful chocolate gouge shakes. I found it to be reduce nicer than the Westin, but not so much nicer that it's accordingly paying a lot more for."

I think "delinquent perusal-out" is my favorite expression and I think I will request it at my next stay at the W Seattle...

Apparently Mr. Alexei Khokhlov's specialty is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Expect more of this with your recently loosened requirements to be logged in, let alone a FT member to view posts by allowing "bots" to crawl your site.

His site is all about FT's Greatest Hits!

I am still annoyed by the opening of ALL of FT to crawlers, but the actions betray the intention, IMO.

If FT is all about the hits, it would logically follow that it would defend 'its' content and hits where possible.

On my understanding of how FT is being run to maximise hits, it would sooner get rid of this hit pirate than it would undo the bots / crawler / hit-increasing restructuring of this internet advertising business, known to us as FlyerTalk.

Yep, congrats, Randy. This is what you get for opening FT to Google.

Except for a couple forums, FT has always been accessible without logging in.

Bots have been crawling FT for years. I found FT in 2004 when I was Googling for info on NW "W" fare bump vouchers; Google's entire database is based on the labors of Google Bots. On any site running Adsense, almost every user is shadowed by a Google Adsense Bot that crawls the page & determines what ads to present. There is no escaping bots on the internet today.

Logging is no obstacle either. There's another site out there (boardreader.com) that basically steals the content of boards & represents it with their advertising. They manually create logins for their bots.

Except for a couple forums, FT has always been accessible without logging in.

Bots have been crawling FT for years. I found FT in 2004 when I was Googling for info on NW "W" fare bump vouchers; Google's entire database is based on the labors of Google Bots. On any site running Adsense, almost every user is shadowed by a Google Adsense Bot that crawls the page & determines what ads to present. There is no escaping bots on the internet today.

Logging is no obstacle either. There's another site out there (boardreader.com) that basically steals the content of boards & represents it with their advertising. They manually create logins for their bots.

It's been open to Google Bogs at least since 2004.