Found Your Photo On The Internet And You Didn’t Put It There?
It’s a scary thought isn’t it? Strolling through the internet and stumbling upon yourself. It happens more often than you might think. While no-one knows how many online photos are stolen, it is estimated that it happens over a million times a year.
Rob Miller has had it happen to him six times. His major concern: what was the intended usage for his pictures? In three instances, the pictures were used to create false Facebook pages, and the other the times his face was used for online dating websites.
Most recently a friend of Miller’s had been chatting with a man on www.zoosk.com, an online dating community connected to Facebook. She noticed that he looked a lot like her friend Rob, and she reached out to Miller to show him the profile. He immediately recognized that the picture was actually an old picture of his that he has in his Facebook albums.
They reported the user’s profile to Zoosk, and while it is not possible to search by profile name to see if the the thief is still out there, he hopes the profile has been taken down.
“What I find scary is that others are using my picture to possibly harm or manipulate people,” said Miller. “I think I left my Facebook privacy settings a little too open and have not been as careful about who I add.” He has since started to delete people he does not know and restrict those who can see his Facebook page.
The only thing Miller has been able to find out about the person that did this was their email address. Other than that, there isn’t much he can do but hope that Zoosk removes the profile from their site.
Most online dating websites have strict rules about fake profiles and those posing as anyone other than themselves, but no one knows for sure that they are not real until something like this happens.
What about photos being used for purposes other than to deceive others? Rubyyy (her spelling) Jones from London found an old photo of hers being used for an article titled “Where do most single people live in the country” posted by the BBC.
“It was kind of weird, it was a portfolio shoot I did for a photographer five or six years ago; you forget about these things sometimes,” said Jones. “As someone who has had to move on from trauma, that was a reminder of that time, the small window just before the dark time and that felt a bit strange.”
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Jones knows all too well being an artist/model that she can’t do anything about the photo as it belonged to the photographer that took it. “I did release the photo to the photographer for his ‘portfolio’ and that does and can include sale so there’s nothing I can do, really. Just laughed about it really, but also took the time to reflect.”
So what can you do to protect yourself and your photos from being used when you haven’t given permission?
Miller suggests being a lot more careful about who we allow on your social media. “They may seem to have mutual connections, but some of these people have been filtrating to get friends built up just so they can gain some footing,” he said.
While there isn’t much Jones can do to stop her photos taken by a professional photographer from being sold, there are measures that can be if you suspect that your photos may be being used maliciously.
“Try Google image search, that will help identify if you have any photos out there you didn’t put there. Also, restrict if you can who can see your social media, and don’t add people you don’t know,” said Miller.
Miller has learned the hard way that people have bad intentions when they steal others photos and he doesn’t want to be affiliated in anyway. While he hasn’t filed a police report, he has always reported the email and the profile in an effort to shut down the profile.
