Emily

Hi Ms Emily...loved the soundtrack for Fear Of The Dark...!
          
          Best wishes for an illustrious career in the creative field...!!!

DEAR EVERYONE - HELP ME TALK TO WATTPAD HQ
          
          I spoke with representatives of Wattpad HQ today on the phone regarding our concerns in regards to the recent security issue, as well as our concerns as to how this issue was handled, and am looking for feedback to report to them so they can take this issue seriously. 
          
          To keep focus on what we can do going forward to prevent this was happening again, I've currently drafted my last update, though be advised that from my sources the known issue was resolved.
          
          If you'd like, please let me know either here, in the comments in the link, or in a private message your feelings on the matter. 
          
          Unless you want me to screenshot you or give your name so that they can contact you directly, I promise to keep you anonymous. If not, please let me know so they can reach out to you.  
          
          Please tag everyone you know so that I can get this report to HQ so they can hear from us directly what we need from them now, and what we hope they will give us in the future. 
          
          https://www.wattpad.com/463030467-removed-please-read-talk-to-wattpad-hq

UPDATE ON SECURITY CONCERN:
           
          I've been informed from a reliable source that Wattpad development team has worked to close this particular loophole. While I still believe they need to take these threats seriously the first time they hear about them, and should do their best to anticipate issues, I would like if you all informed others of this who you tagged people in my book.
          
          https://www.wattpad.com/461408985-removed-oh-like-it%27s-better-updated

I made a Facebook fan group for all of my followers to get updates on my latest stories, WIP, fan art, and more rat memes and stories. 
          
          You can find it through my Facebook page ( www.facebook.com/GodhandAuthor/ ) or messaging me there and I'll add you :)
          
          Currently taking ideas and plan to do a poll on what to call you all. I'm so used to "Collective" from my @ParanormalCommunity days...
          
          -Goddy

If I made a Facebook group, how many of you would be interested in following my writing on there?
          
          I'll post excerpts from works in progress and fan art and updates and cute rat and Denver and chaosmagick memes.

@JessicaBFry covers some good points about what to do if you've been targeted by plagiarists or pirates and how to protect yourself when writing stories online.
          
          https://www.wattpad.com/story/120843009-dealing-with-plagiarists-pirates-and-problems

There'd be little need for legal team actions and hunting down every thief if they invested in security that prevented, or at least made very difficult, such websites or browsers from doing these things in the first place, wouldn't there?
          
          An ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure and all that.
          
          So maybe instead of telling to calm everyone down by saying "Have faith in Wattpad :)" after they've broken our trust, or to accuse authors who have been burned of 'overreacting' by deciding that the benefits of Wattpad are not worth the risks to our intellectual property, they could reassure us that they're taking efforts to fix these security issues in order to gain our trust back and fulfill the promise they first made of providing a platform that did its best to allow us to tell stories while minimizing as best they could the risks with digital media. 
          
          Until then, authors have every right to decide no, this risk is too much, and take their stories down. 
          
          Maybe Wattpad will shut this rant down. But until then I would hope that everyone who reads this tags someone or tells their friends on social media about the risks with posting to Wattpad and how it's not what it was.  Tell them you want better security, and then maybe you'll bring your works back. 
          
          Wattpad wanted to be a social media platform. Fine. Give it to them. 
          
          I'm done.

Sure, Wattpad provides us a platform and infrastructure that we agree to be on for the reach and access it has in exchange for the ad revenue they generate in order to keep it going.
          
          But as writing is a business for some people, you sometimes have to make executive decisions on what amount of risk is worth it to you?
          
          I said once on a panel that there's always a risk with putting your work out on any digital platform. That's still true. There are ways around things you read on a tablet. 
          Hell, even sticking only to print and limiting your sales that way may not save you because people can still scan them and upload them or run them through a program that takes text off screen and converts that into something you can edit.
          
          But there's a difference between making things as difficult for criminals as you can and understanding there's still risk, and just paying lip service to security.

But I guess Wattpad doesn't see us as anything more than dollar signs, because they put in one line of code that prevents right clicking and copy-pasting and that's about the extent of their protections to authors. Their commitment. 
          
          There's ways around that though. There's people who will tell you how. Turns out, they've known about this exploit for years and never bothered to fix it. I can only speculate it's because most users are readers who use the app, but that doesn't make it okay. 
          
          And there are websites that will download your story into a txt, pdf, or epub format. Yes, even the private chapters. I won't tell you because then the morally experimental folk might find it as well. But the only word we get from Wattpad is 'our legal team is working on it'.
          
          Not to mention the virus filled mirror-sites that pretend to be Wattpad, your stories include, with their own advertisers and possibly even less protections than what Wattpad claims to offer.

There are security risks with using Wattpad, and I feel they need to be more open about that until they address the underlying issues in their code. They need to be open not only with the authors who look to Wattpad as a way to connect with new readers and test out fresh stories that may not have a market in the general populace, but with the companies they want to connect to. TNT, Netflix. Even the publishers like Simon & Schuster. Do they know that Wattpad's claim that these stories haven't been plagiarized and sold elsewhere (without the author's consent) may not be true?
          
          Several authors I know have had their stories ripped from Wattpad and put up elsewhere. If it were for personal use, I wouldn't mind so much. I will tell you a story for free because I enjoy it. But many authors make a living or at the very least fill in the gaps with their bills with writing, but that doesn't need to be the case to give their work value. Countless hours of research and craft study and outlining and drafting and redrafting go into our stories and books. That has value. Value that we choose to share willingly.