Spammers and Shortened Blog Feeds

Hi everyone. Some of you have probably noticed the shortened view of my blog posts. I’ve added in a “Read More” link, which I’m also working on making bigger so that it is easier to see where to click. You can always click the title of the blog to go to the full post.

I have had to do this because spammers have taken advantage of the full post feed option for www.spiritualawakeningprocess.com to directly copy and post whole spiritual blog posts to their sites. So those of you who signed up to receive my blogs to your inbox now have to click on the link to come to this site instead of reading the full blog post in your email. I apologize for this, but this is currently the easiest solution to stop spammers from re-posting whole blog posts without my permission on their site.

Why This Matters

The Internet is still the latest edition of the Wild, Wild West right now. All kinds of stuff goes on. While I don’t mind someone sharing segments of my blog posts and spreading the message of spirituality, stealing whole posts to support whatever agenda they have is simply dishonest and out of integrity.

Additionally, it creates the problem of duplicate content. For those of you who don’t understand Google, the search engine is always interested in sending people to the best content. Their whole business model is based on it. But what page should it direct people to if the content on two pages is the exact same? What happens is that my site will lose Web traffic, and people interested in connecting with me because they like my words will go to one of these spammer sites.

Somewhere in here are also issues about when something becomes public domain if it is freely available and all over the place. This tends to be particularly important to my ebook, which occasionally gets stolen and posted for free download elsewhere. That means I have to find the spammers and contact them to get it taken down. The nicer ones comply. Others aren’t so nice.

Helping Out

So that’s what’s going on. I hope that the little change I’ve made with the Read Me link is easy for you to see and find your way to the posts that you enjoy reading. If you ever see multiple whole posts from SpiritualAwakeningProcess.com being put up somewhere, please let me know.

Please also let me know if you see my ebook, “Everyday Spirituality: Cultivating an Awakening,” some place for free download. While I don’t mind the irony of spammers spreading spirituality, I am trying to create a financial support mechanism that can support me so that I can only work one job as a spiritual teacher, and as I said, it’s just plain dishonest for anyone to take something without permission. People need to be held accountable for it, and accountability is also very much a part of divine love.