We’ve all seen the scam. A fake Facebook profile shows up, complete with your friend’s name, their photo, and even posts stolen from their real page. The scammer sends friend requests to people who are already connected to the real person, and some accept without thinking.
Soon, the private messages start: asking “friends” for personal info, money, or “help.” The real person finds out, posts that they’ve been “hacked” (they haven’t, their profile was just copied), and the chaos starts. Comments flood in from scammers offering or pretending to help, which only adds to the mess.
The good news? Reporting a fake Facebook profile is fairly straightforward, and once the complaint is filed, Facebook usually takes it down quickly.
Now, imagine that same scam, but instead of a profile, it’s your entire website, a total clone designed to hijack your brand and scam your customers.
A Problem That’s Getting Worse, Fast
In just the last week alone, we’ve had two clients report their sites were cloned. But, it’s not just our experience that indicates it’s a growing problem. In 2023 alone, more than 963,000 unique phishing sites were detected worldwide, many designed to mimic legitimate brands and siphon away trust, traffic, and customer data.
There’s no question the trend is accelerating. Overall phishing and scam activity has surged 94% since 2020, and in a single recent month, researchers identified 2.2 million fraudulent sites targeting legitimate businesses.
Today’s scammers aren’t relying on sloppy, obvious knockoffs. Thanks to AI-powered scraping tools, they can capture your site. Every page, image, form, and feature, launched as a pixel-perfect duplicate on a different domain, spelled the same as yours…except for a single letter… in minutes. And if we’re seeing it happen twice in one week, the odds are it’s already happening…or could soon happen…to you.
This is called website cloning or website hijacking, and it’s not just a nuisance. It’s a serious threat. To the average visitor, the fake site looks and works exactly like yours. It might even rank in search results for your name or brand. The only difference between the fake site and yours is the code the scammer has added to steal customer information, push malware, or divert payments.
The risks are huge, for both you and your customers.
The danger for you:
- Loss of trust when people think your brand is connected to the scam site.
- Possible SEO damage if search engines index the fake as the “real” site.
- Legal headaches if stolen data gets traced back to “your” site.
The danger for your customers:
- Stolen personal or financial information.
- Downloaded malware or ransomware.
- Fake transactions for products or services that never arrive.
Once this happens, your business’s reputation is in danger.
Why It’s Harder to Stop Than a Fake Facebook Profile
Taking down a fake Facebook profile is easy. Taking down a cloned website? Not so much.
Scammers hide their identities behind privacy-protected domain registrations. They host the fake site on servers in other countries. They use SEO tricks to get it indexed. But because the site looks exactly like yours, the average person can’t tell which is which.
That’s where we come in.
When a client came to us last week with a fake website copy issue, we:
- Traced the fake domain’s registrar and hosting provider.
- Took the proper action with both to take the site down.
- Used the appropriate tools and techniques to remove the site’s pages from Google and Bing search results
- Reported the domain to phishing and fraud databases used by browsers and security tools.
- Monitored the site’s status until it’s entire digital footprint was completely erased.
It took coordinated, persistent effort, but it worked.
Could It Already Be Happening to You?
It’s possible there are copies of your site online right now, and you wouldn’t even know.
Here’s how you can check:
- Search for your brand or site name in Google and Bing, and look for domains that aren’t yours.
- Search for a unique phrase from your site (in quotes) to see if it appears elsewhere.
- Check image search results for your logo or distinctive product photos.
If you find a suspicious match, don’t engage with the scammer and don’t try to handle it alone. These cases require precision, legal backing, and technical strategy to take down a cloned site successfully.
We Can Help
Worried that someone may be copying your website or stealing your brand assets to pose as your business? Trivera offers a complimentary audit—just request it, and we’ll use our proven process to uncover whether scammers are impersonating you or misusing your digital content.
If we find evidence of impersonation or stolen assets, our team can take point on the entire takedown process: tracing the source, handling all communications, and working to remove fraudulent sites from search engines and browser safety lists. And if you want ongoing protection, we also offer advanced monitoring with a proprietary technique that alerts us the moment your site or brand is copied again.
Your website is the heart of your brand. Protect yours by shutting down the fakes. Your reputation is depending on you.
