BBC, CNN, CNBC, Guardian, and News Farm pretend to be the 60+ major news outlets…

The BBC, CNBC, CNN, Forbes, Huffington Post, Reuters, The Guardian, and Washington Post are just a few examples of the content farms that BleepingComputer has discovered.

These “news” websites repost articles from trustworthy media and research organizations without attribution, which we were able to trace to their owner&nbsp, an Indian citizen.

Beyond that, however, their goals appear to be multifaceted: from developing SEO for their online gambling, to deceptively selling “press release” and “product review” ad slots to unsuspecting customers looking to market their goods online.

More than 60 “news” websites are run by Content Farm.

A network of more than five “news” websites has been identified that impersonate well-known media outlets like The BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Crunchbase, Forbes, Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Metro ( UK), The Mirror, The Telegraph, Reuters, Washington Times, and Washington Post.

In this article, we’ve provided a detailed list of these domains.

Without proper attribution, these websites repost previously published news articles from other sources and verbatim under the pseudonym “admin” author account, effectively plagiarising them from trustworthy media outlets and research organizations.

Notice the following article, for instance, published on www .&nbsp. The Guardian is a website hosted by Guardian News Today, which is independent of the widely read newspaper.

BleepingComputer discovered that the article, along with its headline and body, was word-for-word copied from a trustworthy source, including a jurist. a legal news and commentary website called www.org.

sells press releases for$ 1,000 and uses SEO and tonbsp to spam forums.

In an effort to improve SEO for these online properties, the party behind this operation frequently spams&nbsp, forums, and comment sections of various kinds of&nbsp, websites with backlinks &nbsp, to&nbsp, these&nbsp, domains in an effort to give them credibility.

Below are posts made on&nbsp, a gaming forum, and the&nbsp, a popular Immigration Boards forum, where community members share their experiences with the UK immigration process.

BleepingComputer also pointed out that &nbsp, the network’s owner, appeared to be selling &nbsp, advertorial slots for press releases and product reviews, &nbsp, starting at$ 50 per post or a “bulk deal” priced at$ 1,000 in some of these comments.

Who could confront these lookalike websites&nbsp, with legitimate media outlets&nbsp, with unsuspecting readers interested in promoting their products?

maintains presence on Google News and   and social media and  

Additionally, we learned that the operator maintains Facebook pages for some of these as well as running over five dozen online properties, much like real media companies do.

Notice that the Washington Times News Today physical address is that of a well-known American newspaper, Washington Times.

Below is a search results for a Sky Sports ( UK) article that also appears on CanadianNewsToday .com, a division of this domain syndicate, and is accessible on Google News.

The full list was made public.

A list of the 60+ live domains that are currently associated with this network can be found below. As more domains are discovered, BleepingComputer will keep an eye on this campaign and update the list.

Any information or “news” published on these websites should not be relied upon to be reliable and fact-checked independently.

Additionally, there is no guarantee that any goods or services being promoted on these websites through promotional advertisements are legitimate and could be a&nbsp scam.

www.australiannewstoday.com
www.bbcnewstoday.com
www.bloombergnewstoday.com
www.bostonnewstoday.com
www.britishnewstoday.com
www.canadiannewstoday.com
www.chinaworldnewstoday.com
www.chroniclenewstoday.com
www.cnbcnewstoday.com
www.cnnworldtoday.com
www.crunchbasenewstoday.com
www.dailyexpressnewstoday.com
www.dailyheraldnewstoday.com
www.dailymirrornewstoday.com
www.dailystarnewstoday.com
www.dailytelegraphnewstoday.com
www.dutchnewstoday.com
www.dwnewstoday.com
www.europeannewstoday.com
www.forbesnewstoday.com
www.frenchnewstoday.com
www.germaynewstoday.com
www.guardiannewstoday.com
www.headlinesworldnews.com
www.huffingtonposttoday.com
www.irishnewstoday.com
www.italiannewstoday.com
www.livemintnewstoday.com
www.maltanewstime.com
www.mirrornewstoday.com
www.nationalposttoday.com
www.neatherlandnewstoday.com
www.neweuropetoday.com
www.norwaynewstoday.com
www.oxfordnewstoday.com
www.portugalnewstoday.com
www.postgazettenewstoday.com
www.republicofchinatoday.com
www.reuterstoday.com
www.russiannewstoday.com
www.scotlandnewstoday.com
www.spanenewstoday.com
www.switzerlandnewstoday.com
www.thedailymailnewstoday.com
www.thedailytelegraphnewstoday.com
www.theexpressnewstoday.com
www.theheraldnewstoday.com
www.theindependentnewstoday.com
www.theirishtimesnewstoday.com
www.theirishtimestoday.com
www.themetronewstoday.com
www.themirrornewstoday.com
www.thequintnewstoday.com
www.thestarnewstoday.com
www.thesunnewstoday.com
www.thetelegraphnewstoday.com
www.timesofnetherland.com
www.timesofspanish.com
www.topeuropenews.com
www.topworldnewstoday.com
www.turkeynewstoday.com
www.walesnewstoday.com
www.washingtonposttoday.com
www.washingtontimesnewstoday.com

India as the source of the operation

Public WHOIS records indicate that many of these domains have been around since at least 2022, with new ones being added gradually over the course of time, well into 2024.

According to BleepingComputer, the majority of these websites use WordPress as their preferred CMS and share a common registrar and host, One .com.

We were able to identify the owner of some of these websites based on the contact information provided by some of these websites. According to our preliminary analysis, the operation is based in India and is currently operating out of India.

The ultimate objective of these online ventures is apparently to promote online gambling, sports betting, casino games, and crypto enterprises, which are among the key focus areas of the entity behind this operation, in addition to using well-known media trademarks for SEO marketing.

The owners of this syndicate may be connected to jackpotbetonline .com, a sports betting and gambling business that, according to its LinkedIn page, is located in Gurugram, India, and has been active since at least 2014. The company’s X ( previously Twitter ) social media account was suspended.

Given the numerous use cases for a large-scale domain network, it is difficult to determine whether its activities have included  SEO building and  deceptively selling advertising spaces; or could it evolve to , disseminate , fake news and disinformation, which it can do.

This discovery reminds one of a 2023 NewsGuard report that promoted AI-generated articles that were also attributed to an “admin” account in a report from NewsGuard.

The content that these&nbsp, websites&nbsp, are blatantly reposting is still copyrighted and subject to legal disputes even if the owners of this&nbsp, business&nbsp can get away with trademark violations by claiming that the names of their websites are sufficiently different from established Western media outlets and that they operate in a&nbsp, different geographical location.

Updated on March 3rd, 02:17 a.m. ET: Added a copycat website example that includes the newspaper’s real address.