The world of WordPress themes is a dark place, my friends. I’ve written before about the dangers of using free WordPress themes but things are only getting worse for this topic.

Recently, many sites are popping up offering free WordPress themes for download. That should be no surprise as there are already many similar sites on the web today. The twist with this new breed is that they’re posting freely available themes from other sites and then stripping out or adding in spam links to each theme.

Of course, they are being paid for those links while the original theme designer receives nothing and also has his creation modified against his will. A lot of these sites are being found and reported to designers in the WordPress community each day.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure there is a whole lot that can be done to stop them. If one happens to be shut down it would be pretty trivial for another one to spring up and take its place in short order.

Just remember to be careful about what themes you’re downloading and from where.