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tldr: Someone made an illegal copy of my website dynamicsubspace.net and is using it for scamming people who are enticed with an offer for an impossibly cheap name brand backpack on Facebook, which link to the face version of my website. The scammers use fake Facebook accounts and a variety of websites, including the illicit copy of dynamicsubspace.net. Just to be clear: dynamicsubspace.net is the only domain name for the website of Jason W. Ellis, an English professor at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. Any other domain names with content identical to my website are illicit copies. Please read on for more details and the evidence that I collected.
Late this past week, I received a strange email with the subject line “Decathlon” from someone speaking Dutch asking me not to charge their credit card. I thought it was some kind of strange spam, so I deleted it.
Then, I received an email from someone in Switzerland warning me that my website might have been compromised and was hosting scammy pop-ups. However, the link he included in his email was to a domain that I won’t link to (spelled out it is: irsw dot info), but I will share some screenshots of below. It is a full copy of my website at dynamicsubspace.net–all the text, images, and links–through 29 April 2025 (about 18 years worth of content). Because it’s a complete copy, it also includes my contact information that I include on the Contact page and in the sidebar on the right.
On the surface, it seemed like it was just theft of all of my content and possibly fraudulent hosting of my website. But, thanks to my Swiss friend and a little more digging on my part, I discovered that scammers were using the copy of my website as a front for hosting and tracking a scam in which they offer impossibly good deals on backpacks in posts on Facebook, which then link to either the fake version of my website or other websites that no longer seem to work. For Europeans, they pretend to be former employees of Decathlon, a sports chain there, and for Americans, they pretend to be former employees of Dick’s Sporting Goods. You can find many conversations about these scams by searching Google for “north face backpack scam facebook.” There are conversations from the UK, EU, New Zealand, the United States, and other places in the results. There’s even a news report in Bulgaria about this scam.
The scam begins on Facebook. A fake profile for “Eliane Brunner” posts about knowing the secret to obtaining this North Face backpack for an incredibly low price by filling out a survey. This fake account then posts a comment to the post with a link. That link then goes to the fake version of my website.
I won’t provide a direct link to the fake version of my website, but you can see the URL in the screenshot below. The Facebook post shown above links to the specific post seen below–a popular post on my website in which I review The North Face Electra backpack. The title and slug for the post are the same as on my website. However, you can see that there is additional tracking information appended to the URL that I do not use on my website. Also, I should note that the scammers even have the search feature active–I was able to locate other posts easily using the search box on the fake site.
I wasn’t able to replicate the pop-up behavior others reported, but they describe a panel popping up over the fake version of my website that begins the process of gathering information from the person about to be scammed.
The profile has pictures and videos that were first uploaded three days ago. The composition of the photos appear to show a young woman visiting New York City and attending theater shows. There’s also a video of a child reading books to their dog. I don’t think that these were AI generated. I think that they were stolen from an unsuspecting Facebook user who is as much a victim as I am in having my website’s content stolen and hosted elsewhere to support the scam.
Using reverse image search, I was able to track down another fake profile using the same photos but now with the name “Brooke Mitchell.” Notice that the scammers are now writing in English and the receipt held in front of the backpack has been altered to show the logo for Dick’s Sporting Goods instead of Decathlon. The barcode (not shown above) at the bottom of the receipt is the same on both images.
The Brooke Mitchell profile is the same as the Eilane Brunner profile. There are several other Facebook accounts that use these same photos but give locations such as Mexico and Italy with location-specific made-up names. I wasn’t able to track down who is the actual person in these photos.
As others have reported, I tried reporting the scam posts to Facebook, but Facebook declined to remove the post.
As far as the fake version of my website, I reached out to Namecheap, who is that domain name’s registrar. They claim to take fraud and copyright violations seriously in their help documentation, so we’ll see how they respond to my email.
Please remember that dynamicsubspace.net is my only domain name for my website. Any other domain name copying my content is a fake website.
