When Imitation is the Shadiest Form of Flattery

Thursday, October 23, 2014


I finally let my old blog domain name lapse in August, & yesterday I discovered that someone else has purchased it. I knew that was likely to happen, but you know what's worse? The fact that the new owner's name is ALSO Kate B., & she's set up a site redirect to try to make it look like I've moved to a new blog - hers! 

Her welcome message on the site now reads,
"Hey everyone, it’s KatieB and I’m here to deliver some exciting news. I’ve been secretly working on a new site for the past few months now and am just about ready to share it with the world. I’ll be redirecting this site to my new one, so this is just a courtesy message to let ya know. Looking forward to seeing you on the other side!”
It then provides a link to her (my?) new blog (which I refuse to provide a link to on principle).  This, of course, makes it sound like she's ME, former KateB-who-blogged-at-that-domain, & that I'm moving to a new blog. As far as I can tell, she's intentionally trying to mislead my old readers to get them to follow me (her!) to a new site, capitalizing on my high traffic all those seven years that I was SuburbanSweetheart.com.

To be clear, I don't really care what she does with the domain, but I'm creeped out by the intentional misdirect to snag anyone who might think I moved my whole site to hers. Luckily, anyone who's ever known me can probably guess that I didn't start a new blog on running & Paleo diets. BUT STILL.

All I really want is for Imposter KateB to change her offending wording so that it doesn't sound like she's trying to pretend she's been at that domain the whole time or that her new blog is mine. I left a few comments on her blogs to that effect, but given the general shadiness of the whole thing - & the fact that this was almost certainly an intentional ploy to increase her traffic - I'm trying not to get my hopes too high about the likelihood of her compliance.

In the meantime, I'll just be sitting around fuming... & learning my goddamn lesson about being too cheap/lazy to pay the $10 renewal fee.

But hey. I guess it's better than becoming a porn site?

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