DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 15 November) – A digital forensics expert, non-profit Qurium Media, has identified a China-based network as behind the cloning of hundreds of websites, including MindaNews, that lead site visitors into gambling websites.
The Chinese-registered m[dot]mart-inn.com has been cloning the contents of MindaNews without permission in the last two years.
We discovered the spurious site on June 5 after scouring MindaNews’ online presence, when a search for one of our keywords “mindaviews” led to the suspicious website.
MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews, which is composed of independent, professional Mindanawon journalists who believe and practice people empowerment through media since 2001.
Qurium, with headquarters in Sweden, released the results of its investigation on November 15 (November 14 Philippine time) after MindaNews reported its cloning five months ago.
The Davao City-based online media outfit discovered that m[dot]mart-inn.com copied without permission its contents – news, photos and opinion pieces.
The latest cloned contents date back to February 2023, shown by the stories displayed on the website via Google Search tools.
Based on our monitoring, the last banner story of MindaNews scraped by the website was the suspension of classes in two Davao provinces hit by a Magnitude 6 earthquake.
m.mart-inn.com scrapes off contents from mindanews.com and automatically translates them into Chinese language.
The m.mart-inn.com website appears differently on different screens and browsers, depending on their rendering capacities. Some MindaNews authors were retained in their English names, while others were translated into Chinese. However, in general, the content is the same when translated to English.
Scraping means the import and extraction of web data for “personal use or reuse.”
A www.who.is search of the domain revealed that the website registrant is based in Hebei, China.
All the other information about the registrant is confidential. The domain service provider, www.gname.com, lists m.mart-inn.com’s domain to have been registered on July 9, 2021, with the domain name expiring on July 9, 2024. It was last updated on June 30, 2023.
The primary domain home page, www.mart-inn.com, is also scraped from the contents of another website, www.dxpe.com (DXP), an industrial solutions provider based in the United States and Canada.
DXP is a supplier of items such as rotating equipment, bearings, power transmission, metal works, industrial supplies, and more, according to its actual website.
Qurium said that DXP and MindaNews are among the hundreds of websites that were scraped.
In its findings, Qurium identified the network “50.2.35{.}0/24” as hosting the clonings.
Qurium added that Eonix Corporation-owned ServerHub hosted the site, and Qurium has since reached out to ServerHub on the behavior of the network.
ServerHub said it was still conducting a thorough investigation as of 6 p.m. Wednesday Philippine time.
But the copycat websites have one thing in common – they all contain digital advertisements leading to betting websites.
“All clones were created during September 2021 and include advertisement of the gambling company “188bet” via the link hxxp://www.520xingyun.com/from/188bet.php,” the Qurium report said.
188BET is listed on www.businesslist.ph with address in “Makati, Manila, Philippines.” Based on its description, the company is working in consulting, online content, online games, casinos and gambling.
However, 188bet.com is not accessible in the Philippines. Upon accessing the website from Davao City, the result returned with “Error 403: Location Forbidden.” But through the use of advanced search tools, MindaNews was able to find out more about the website and its interface.
Company profile website www.rocketreach.co has this to say about 188BET:
“Owned by Cube Limited in the Isle of Man, 188BET is a global online gaming company that offers more than 10,000 live games to bet on each month. 188BET has established its reputation as an in-play specialist. Alongside its Sportsbook, 188BET has a full product suite available, with extensive offerings ranging from Casino, Live Casino, Poker to Financials and Mobile. 188BET further increased its credentials in the global sports market as partners of Liverpool Football Club.”
The 188BET app could not be seen from Google Play Store when accessed from the Philippines. Its search results returned mostly gaming and gambling apps.
According to Qurium, the network has cloned hundreds of websites across various industries.
“When digging into the network prefix, we identified hundreds of cloned websites hosted in the very same network. The clones include websites from universities, public libraries and private businesses,” the Qurium report said.
Last May, MindaNews found a Facebook page, Bayani Philippines, that also scrapes off its contents without permission.
To counter this, MindaNews tweaked its site to prevent further scrapings from Bayani Philippines. (Yas D. Ocampo / MindaNews)
(This report was made possible by an Internews project to build the capacity of news organizations in understanding disinformation and influence operations in the Philippines.)