SINGAPORE, May 27 — Pirated bags, pirated clothes, pirated software, and now, pirated blogs?

With advertising dollars to be had from site hits, copycats have come up with ever inventive ways of leeching off the efforts of original bloggers.

It can range from “splogs” that use automated software to copy online content, to human copy-and-pasters who either lift wholesale with small changes or in part.

Blogger Blobzz, a 29-year-old housewife, was a victim of one such copycat.

She runs a blog shop at knickknackstogo.blogspot.com, which sells mainly handbags and fashion accessories.

Although it was profitable —  she earns an average of more than S$2,000 (RM4,830) a month — she e-mailed her customers last month that she was going to be slowing down as she wanted to spend more time with her sons, aged 2-1/2 and 1.

But soon she started getting strange e-mails. The first few were inquisitive, asking if certain items were in stock, even though she hadn’t put up anything new.

But then she got an e-mail saying she was dishonest, accusing her of saying something was in stock when it wasn’t. The writer also called her by a different name.  …read more or Click Here To Learn How To Prevent Identity Theft.