[i will not promote] Someone cloned my landing page and injected malware before I had steady sales, so here is what it taught me about validation

Hey, I wanted to share a weird experience from building my solo project (a native macOS utility for developers) and get your thoughts on handling early-stage theft. A while ago, I noticed something off with my brand search terms. It turned out someone had completely scraped my landing page, rehosted it under a similar domain, and swapped my app download links with malware. At first, I was stressed about the potential reputation damage. But after talking to another founder, I looked at it differently: if scammers are actively trying to piggyback on your positioning and search intent, you’ve likely found a problem worth solving. Instead of letting it derail me, I filed the DMCA/registrar takedowns, refocused entirely on direct distribution, and recently hit a solid milestone with consistent paying customers worldwide. A few quick takeaways from the experience: Automated scrapers are watching launch sites: If you launch on Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, or Reddit, clone sites will pop up quickly. Setting up basic Google Alerts for your brand early is worth the 2 minutes. Strange form of validation: When you build in public, seeing someone try to hijack your demand is a sign that the pain point (in my case, developer machine storage bloat) has real search volume. Has anyone else dealt with fake clones or copycats right when you were trying to get your first traction? How did you handle it without letting it consume all your dev time?