This special feature was written exclusively for Orgasm News by Alia Janine.

Like anything else that is meant for good  in this world, the internet can be a breeding ground for undesirables and unmentionables. What’s meant for educating, informing, and entertaining can be uses to steal, bully, and harass. They are not much different from when a person does these horrible things to another person in the flesh, except they can be harder to find. That is why it is very important to protect yourself from online scrapers, bullies, and trolls. Not only to protect your material, but to protect yourself. In this three part blog series,  I will discuss how to protect yourself, your material, and your sanity.

Remember books? Those awesome things with a bunch of pieces of paper with words on them, all bound up with some thread and placed between thicker paper or even cardboard? They’re amazing, right? Back in the day of books, it was easier to find someone that was stealing, copying, distributing someone else’s material.

Presently, with social media networks like Tumblr to personal blogs such as WordPress and Blogger, there are millions of “writers” and even more literary works for people to steal. When some steals a blog post that someone else has written it is called scraping. It’s different then plagiarism because most scrapers are not copying what you write and  not giving you credit for it. It’s quite the opposite actually.

Scraping is made easy because most people do not protect themselves from them. It’s not that they don’t want to be protected, they just don’t how. Every blog has this thing called a RSS Feed. This is basically one link to every post someone publishes online. Scrapers use this link and place it on their website and/or blog and all of the other person’s post will now show up on theirs. The blog owner is the only one that can control what goes in that feed. For example, on a WordPress site it is important to fill out the contact information and have the site link present.

Go into “Users” under “Profile” to add the contact information.

User to Your Profile to add contact information

Go to “Settings” under “Reading” they will be able to control if the RSS feed will be the full text or a summary of the posts.

Settings to Reading to change RSS feed

If a person’s website/ blog has any type of SEO plugins they can control their content even more. This way, if someone reads the summary of a post on a site and wants to finish it, the website the post originally came from will get the traffic it should be.

SEO RSS content

Not all scraping is bad either. If a more popular website/blog posts someone’s blog, and gives that person credit and has a link back to where the post originally came from, not only did that person just become a published blogger, but received a pingback. Which is great for building a reputation for a site and getting more traffic. At the same time, make sure that the site trying to do the pingback has a good reputation itself because not all pingbacks are good, and they could actually lower the sites rankings. The website/blog owner controls what information and what content goes out, how much of it is to be seen, and when it will be posted. They only thing they can’t really control, is where it is going. That is why it is important to check the account settings and prevent scrapers from scraping.

About the Writer:

Alia Janine is one of the most outspoken opponents of Measure B. She has made her mark in adult entertainment with her all-natural body and has acted in countless scenes as well as being a feature/burlesque dancer. She also has a degree in Police Sciences and is a member of two National Honor societies.

You can connect with Alia via her site: www.aliajanine.com and on Twitter @Alia_Janine