Protecting the privacy of digital content is an important issue for website operators. People in the fields of art and photography tend to create their own websites to share their work with others. However, sharing images online often carries the risk of image theft.
This is also the case in the world of online courses, where others can simply copy the content or download your materials and media files and earn money. In this article we will suggest 3 methods to prevent content theft.
What is content theft?
Content theft is not a foreign concept to most internet users. Most of us have seen someone’s work, or even your own, being used on other websites without crediting the original author.
This is a typical case of content theft. Or to put it another way, using someone else’s work without their permission is content theft. Content theft applies to almost all types of digital content, including written texts, images, videos, audio files, etc. that are not freely available to the public.
Plagiarism is the most common form of content theft. It involves simply copying articles or pages from one website and pasting them on another website without obtaining permission or citing a source.
If someone tries to steal your work, they will try all sorts of methods until they get what they want. In fact, there are many ways your content can be stolen, but here are the most common methods:
Content scraping
The first method worth mentioning is copy & paste. This involves your articles or even the entire content of your website being copied and published on other websites. Worse still, your website can be overtaken in the rankings by websites created with stolen content.
Unfortunately, there are many tools available today that make it easier for these thieves to copy content automatically, such as auto-blogging tools or scrapers.
Hotlinking
Stealing the bandwidth of a website by linking directly to the content of that website, e.g. images or videos, is called hotlinking. An example: The owner of website A publishes a picture of a landscape on his server. Then the owner of website B sees the image and also wants to include it in his articles. However, instead of downloading the image or taking a screenshot of it, the owner of website B links directly to website A’s domain.
This creates a huge loophole that allows users to show other people’s content without committing copyright infringement. In addition, the hosting costs for your website increase significantly if someone else links directly to your media files.
Content spinning
Content spinning involves taking your original content and using software to replace certain words with synonyms or rearrange sentences to create “unique” content while keeping the core information. These spun articles are designed to bypass plagiarism detection tools while stealing your ideas, research and content structure.
The problem with spun content is that it often keeps enough of your original work to be recognizable but with just enough changes to make copyright claims more difficult. Many content thieves use spinning software to create dozens or even hundreds of “unique” articles from a single piece of your original content and potentially outrank you for your own research and ideas.
Framing and iframing
This involves displaying your entire website or specific content within a frame on another site. The thief embeds your page within theirs using iframe HTML elements so it looks like your content is part of their website. While your URL might still be visible in the address bar, visitors might not even realize they’re viewing content from a different site.
What makes framing particularly bad is that it can steal not just your content but your entire user experience, including interactive elements and even conversion opportunities. Meanwhile, the framing site is displaying their own ads and monetizing your work without your permission.
Data extraction and reformatting
In this more advanced approach, thieves use automated tools or services to extract specific information from your content – product details, pricing information, statistics or research data – and reformat it into new content. For example if you published a detailed WordPress plugin comparison with pricing and features, someone might extract just the data points and present them in a different format.
This type of theft can be particularly bad for research-heavy content or data-driven resources you spent a lot of time creating. The thief benefits from your research and work while potentially avoiding direct copyright infringement claims since they’ve substantially reformatted the information.
Each of these content theft methods can hurt your website’s performance, authority and revenue potential. Knowing how thieves operate is the first step to implementing protection strategies for your WordPress content.
The best ways to prevent content theft
Add a copyright notice on your website on every post and page
If you have a blog with original and valuable content, you may be a prime target of content theft. There are few ways to prevent content theft, but the easiest is to add a small copyright notice at the bottom or top of each post. You can also place the general copyright notice in the sidebar or footer so that it is visible at all times when visiting your website.
Here is an example of a general copyright notice that you can use:
© [Full Name] and [Website Name], [Current Year or Year Range]. Unauthorized use and/or reproduction of this material without the express and written permission of the author and/or owner of this website is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided that full and clear credit is given to [your name] and [name of your website] and appropriate and specific reference is made to the original content.
Set up Google Alerts to search for your name or the name/title of your website
Google Alerts was developed by Google and is a content change detection and notification service. It finds websites, newspaper articles, blogs or scientific research that match the user’s search terms. When the service finds new results, it sends emails to users.
Google Alerts is therefore a straightforward way to quickly find copied content. By copying and pasting part of your content into the field for the search query, you already create a notification. In the parameters, you can set whether you want to be informed daily or once a week when Google Alerts finds copies.
An important note: Google Alerts searches for every word you enter in the search query. Therefore, not all alerts are correct, but they are real alerts because the results match the entire string of words you entered in the search query field.
Password protection for WordPress Pro (PPWP)
Among other options, membership and password protection is a good way to prevent content theft. PPWP protects all or part of your posts and pages and also protects your images and media files.
With the PPWP Pro plugin, you can fully protect your posts and pages. The plugin generates as many strong passwords as you want to protect posts, pages, custom post types or even WooCommerce categories on your WordPress website.
Once you have installed the PPWP plugin, you can protect your content by managing passwords directly in the Posts session in your WordPress dashboard.
When you click on “Manage Password” in the “Password Protection” column, you will see a pop-up window with features that allow you to track, edit and also get the quick access links for that content.
You have full control over the password expiration and usage restriction. You can set it indefinitely or for one-time use only, just as you wish.
You can also create your own password manually by clicking on New password in the pop-up window. In the Type field, select the role you want to use for this password.
Partially protect your posts and pages
In some cases, you may only want to protect some sections of your content. Although WordPress offers built-in password protection, you cannot use this feature to lock partial content. However, you can use the PPWP Pro plugin to protect some of your content.
After installation, you will find the plugin in your WordPress navigation menu. In the following 5 steps, you will learn how to partially password protect your desired posts and pages.
- Navigate to the WordPress plugin password protection section to open the settings page
- Click on the Shortcode tab
- Copy the shortcode
- Go to the Posts/Pages session and select the desired posts/pages
- Wrap the desired protected content with the PPWP shortcode.
- Remember to replace the words “password1 password2” with the desired passwords
You may want to use multiple passwords to lock your posts or a page you have chosen. For example, you may want to protect parts of a post with 2 passwords: a1a2a3 and rt#e5. Then your shortcode will look like this:
[ppwp id=”” class=”” passwords=“a1a2a3, rt#e5” whitelisted_roles=“administrator, editor”] Your protected content [/ppwp]
In this shortcode, roles such as administrators and editors are whitelisted. It is possible to insert any role, even custom roles. This way, these users do not have to enter passwords, but see the content immediately. If you want everyone to be able to use the passwords, simply delete the whitelisted_role section
Protect your images and media files
Just like password protecting your content, you can wrap your protected files with a PPWP shortcode. You can optionally add a description above the shortcode.
When publishing, your post or page will look like this:
Users can access the file if they enter the correct password.
Another way to protect your media file is to use the Prevent Direct Access Gold plugin. This plugin is well integrated into PPWP Pro. All you have to do is activate the “Protect this file” checkbox when editing. Now, your files are protected and any unauthorized access will be redirected to the 404 error page.
Conclusion
Creating great content takes a lot of time and effort, which is why it’s important to protect your content and keep it safe from theft. There are a few methods to help you protect your content. With the Copyright Notice, Google Alerts and PPWP Pro plugins, you can rest easy. To fully protect your files, you can use the Password Protect WordPress Pro or Prevent Direct Access Gold plugin.
