The Diva has been alerted to a swindle that is resurfacing. I got a call from a colleague that shared with me that his domain had been bought and his website completely cloned.

Now that I have your attention, let me tell you how this happened. My colleague, Tom*, had purchased his domain for three years. He used a credit card and paid upfront. The hosting company he used had changed management and not alerted their old customers of the change. Tom’s domain came up for renewal and his credit card had expired. Tom NEVER received noticed that his payment did not go through. Monday night when Tom went to bed, he had a successful online store that was making about four thousand dollars a month. Tuesday night when Tom returned from work his website was gone. Wednesday morning when Tom checked again and started investigating, he found his website back up but his shopping cart was not connected to his products.

Tom was the victim of cloning. Tom discovered that an executive in another country had purchased the domain as soon as it expired. Then within twenty-four hours, he had viewed the source code and duplicated all of Tom’s pages.

Here is how you avoid Tom’s situation:

• Log into your online service accounts monthly and make sure all of the information is accurate
• Update your address, credit cards, phone number, and other contact information regularly
• Log on to provider sites and read their new pages frequently, keep their contact information in your PDA or Rolodex
• Make sure you are with a reputable provider like Godaddy.com
• Read every email that comes from your hosting provider to keep informed
• Set an appointment in your schedule book, Outlook, and on your PDA for two weeks before your domain expires so you can renew it with out a lapse in service
• Keep a free email that is separate from your domain, for instance Yahoo or Hotmail. Use the free mail as a secondary contact address.
• Keep a copy of your site map available

Tom was able to contact the new hosting provider and send them a copy of his XML Site Map to prove that his site was cloned. Within one hour, the newly cloned site was removed from the web. Tom started a new site and his informing all of his clients via email of the new site location and name. Tom was fortunate that he was able to correct the situation quickly, with little damage.

The Diva is committed to helping small businesses by providing tools and information.