the downside to blogging...

I debated whether or not to actually write this post (is it lame? should I just let it go? will my readers be annoyed with me?), but this time was pretty much the last straw to just let it go...

I love blogging. I really do. I love finding beautiful things to share with you all, I love reading all your comments and conversing back and forth, chatting on Twitter, and supporting each other. But what I don't love about blogging? Having my entire 3 years worth of posts stolen and resurrected on a spam site, made to (poorly) look like mine. Yesterday I came across another blog that has secured a url similar to mine, called their blog "dress, design & decor" and has mixed ALL of my posts in with a few other people's on their blog. They then covered the site in pop-up ads so that they can make money. Basically, these kind of people make money off our hard work and there's not much we can do about it. Blogger doesn't require one to leave their contact info on their blog, so there's no way I can actually contact them to ask them to take the site down. Sigh...

So, I should just let it go right? That would be best as it's not worth worrying about, but still, it continues to irritate me. I'm blogging for myself and all of you, not for spammers to make money!

There's one thing that can be done though, the blog can be marked as spam through Bloggers reporting page. It would be so helpful if even just a few hundred people marked this blog as spam. I hope it isn't asking a lot from you, but I would really, really, appreciate it, and maybe Blogger will see that this site is stealing from others.

Take note, I do not recommend actually visiting the site for two reasons:
1. They will make money off your visit, especially if they get a spike of a few hundred curious visitors (I know, it's tempting). Let's not give them that though.
2. The site is laced with pop-up ads which are even worse on a PC, (one is called "virtual girl". ugh...) and I clearly don't want to subject any of you to that.

You can mark the blog as spam by visiting Blogger's "Report a spam blog" page here and pasting in the address: http://www.design-dress.blogspot.com

No pressure at all! Really. But if you do choose to report the blog, thank you very much!

Rant over. Next up, back to regular posting :)

*UPDATE: The blog has officially been deleted! Thank you everyone who helped me mark it as spam. I also filed a report and contacted the ad companies on the site, and the blog stealer finally deleted it.*