Entire Shopify Store Stolen and Duplicated - Please Help!

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A Shopify store owner discovered their entire product catalog (6000+ products, images, descriptions) was scraped and duplicated on a fraudulent domain they don’t control. The scam site appears designed to harvest customer credit card data by offering deep discounts and requesting payment authorization.

Resolution Process:

  • Running a WHOIS lookup to identify the domain registrar
  • Contacting the registrar’s abuse email (PublicDomainRegistry.com or Web Commerce Communication Ltd. were common)
  • Filing reports with Cloudflare, ICANN, and Google
  • Most successful approach: emailing the registrar’s abuse contact resulted in takedown within 24-48 hours

Key Findings:

  • This is a widespread, recurring problem affecting multiple merchants
  • The same scammers (often registered in Malaysia/Wilayah Persekutuan) repeatedly create new domains
  • Shopify cannot help if the fraudulent site isn’t hosted on their platform
  • Right-click prevention code offers minimal protection as scraping tools bypass it easily
  • Legal action is typically impractical due to international jurisdictions

Ongoing Challenges:

  • Sites reappear under different domains after takedown
  • Merchants express frustration that Shopify doesn’t implement stronger native protections
  • Buying up similar domains is expensive and ultimately futile
  • The .shop domain registry shows limited responsiveness to abuse reports

Participants recommend monitoring Google searches for duplicate sites and immediately reporting new instances to registrars.

Summarized with AI on November 4. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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Hi Charp, I really appreciate your time in replying

I only have a small business, and I’m a sole trader with very little IT skills. I think I’ll give the Shopify experts a try, and you’re absolutely right, Shopify could make everything much safer with a wave of their hand I’m sure.

My infringers are the same people it seems, all the info is identical

I’ll carry on with this tomorrow, thanks again!

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