Many of you might know about this already.... and I am coming to the game late...but it is something we have all heard of somewhere on the trail out there- and we definitely need to be aware of.
Yesterday afternoon I received a post on Facebook from an artist in Asheville who posted a painting and said that a company was selling it on-line without her permission. Of course my ears perked up and I thought if it could happen to her-it could happen to a lot of us.
I had heard through AFI about a scam where people come into your booth and shoot pictures of your work and then reproduce it.....so I went on the site to see if this was that was....and if my own work was on there. It was...a lot of it- and so was my daughter's, my son's and my husband's (we are all artists-different mediums). In fact a ton of my work was on there... all for the lovely price of 5.75 each. Of course my first reaction was to freak.....Someone posted a site to complain and get them closed down and I signed up for that. (so dumb). This is a hack (from Russia)- you sign in and they hack your computer. How far this goes- I have no idea-and truly it just sucks. This is the link that is an article that tells you about what they are doing-Whatever You Do... don't go to the site and type in your name to see if they have your work-they are pulling everything off our websites and sizes are incredibly small anyway. Things like this make you feel incredibly violated and sick.....and like you are a stupid sitting duck. I'm pretty savvy and watch my computer but this one took me by surprise and I reacted...beware- don't do it.
here is the article about the site:
-https://fstoppers.com/news/website-will-steal-your-photos-and-then-hack-your-computer-77511
Comments
A few weeks ago I had a booth visitor that was looking at my wildlife paintings and said "There on only mule deer in Colorado, why would anyone buy a picture of a whitetail deer. That would be stupid". Actually we have both, but I didn't argue with him. I told him the whitetail was from Montana and said "You should be thankful it won't be hung on your wall". He smiled and said, "Very nice work."
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they're merely ignorant/inconsiderate. Often they're simply trying to get something for nothing. I love my customers, but I swear so often people treat us as side show attractions or store dummies they can say anything in front of, even insults. I can't understand that kind of insensitivity and lack of manners. We may be selling our artistic souls on the street but that doesn't make us prostitutes.
Wow, it is hard to stay one step ahead of these guys. Imagine if they put their knowledge together for good what they could achieve.
..and let's not forget the folks who just come into your booth and take a picture so they can go home, print it off, and have something for their walls. The quality of cell phone photographs is adequate to produce a decent image for the less-than-super-fussy consumer. It needs to be pointed out to people that this is outright theft.
Honestly, This sort of thing happens even in a private artist life not just on the internet. Your not dumb just taken advantage of. There are people out there that have moxy to look people in the face and claim other peoples work. I used to be a promotional sign painter. Promotions and Christmas windows, the temporary type. Out here it is popular at least at the time when I had my business. Someone took pictures of my Christmas windows, put the photos in a photo album and proceeded to get window appointments to have their windows painted. My windows were elaborate think Norman Rockwell, and expensive. They even represented themselves as California Graffiti which was the name of my business. Some of the people who had their windows painted were actually scheduled to have windows done by me but the impostor person painted them before my scheduled date. My clients said the person said they worked for me and had photos (mine), so they just allowed them to paint the window and collect the money. I was my only employee other than my sisters help occasionally. My clients were unhappy with the work and wanted me to fix it. I fought this for 2 years trying to figure out who was doing this.
I'm just saying that even if you are trying to be careful stuff happens that you couldn't have imagined because you are not like that. I changed my policies and how I did business and eventually it stopped. But it made me look bad at first and I spent time trying to fix my image.
I never saw the website personally, thank God. I read about it in a facebook post. I can see myself immediately clicking on a link to report a copyright violation. It's a very clever scheme and I don't think anyone is dumb for falling for it.
It's sad to me that the victim must be "dumb" for not immediately seeing through every clever scam out there. Thanks for the warning Margaret, I had not heard of this one. I hope it doesn't affect you too badly.
Another similar thing that happed to me - Someone copied image from my website and accused me of stealing it from them. I received legal looking USPS mail from attorneys threatening to sue me for copyright infringement, etc. I responded with a selfie of my middle finger salute. They send out thousands of these hoping some are dumb enough to pay them off. Not me. This one came from "Harvest Foods" and another one was posing as "Getty Images".
Horrible! Thanks for alerting us to this scam and hope you can get yourself out of it without too much damage.
If you click to report copyright violation they will get access to your computer. It's a phishing scam. They aren't selling them at all. They are just pulling images from Google.
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