Friday, October 14, 2011

Oh, the drama

I've had this blog for almost three and a half years now and while I very well know that my photos can be stolen, I never expected it to actually happen. I have a friend online, Pam, who has (adorable) identical triplet boys. She doesn't watermark her pictures and I can't even count the number of times pictures of her cuties have been lifted. One person even went so far to not only post pictures of Pam with her boys but to say that Pam was their aunt!

I thought that by watermarking my photos, I would deter thieves. Unfortunately, I had slacked off a bit in where I placed the watermark and today I received a kind email from a reader alerting me that someone was using my photos on a message board. The thief has since been reported and I alerted the board that "her" photos are actually mine. She had taken some older pictures and cropped out the watermark but then had to make a collage because the pictures all looked weird with the watermark cropped out.

I'm not looking for sympathy or a lecture. I just wanted to post a bit of a PSA.

What actually bothered me the most about the whole incident is that she was posting that only two of them are identical. Whose the fraternal triplet? Anna? Nice.

What actually bothered Rich the most is that apparently I'm expecting a baby in March. He wants to know who the baby daddy is!

21 comments:

Kris said...

I don't understand ... Why are they stealing your (or anyone) kids? Just so they can pretend to have a life??????

Elizabeth said...

It's happened to me too! I don't understand what in the world makes people want to do this!

Katrina said...

I am so sorry your family was exposed to this.

People suck, plain and simple. I hope you will continue to share photos of your girls, but would completely understand if you did not.

pyjammy pam said...

the worst part about one of my fakers was that she made them GGB! not just one, but TWO girls! ha ha!

Just the Tip said...

oh my! If that has happened to me, I haven't found out about it. I keep the same siggy on the bump for months at a time (I think M is 4 months in the one I have now and she's almost 8 IRL)..I rarely post pictures on blogger because it's just annoying.

That's awful though, why would you have fake kids on the internet. The things people do.

Jessica W said...

I don't understand people. I started reading your blog in the spring time and after seeing your pictures it made me think to add watermarks to my pictures. I hate that I have to do that. I'm sorry that it happened to you. btw You girls are adorable and I really enjoy reading your blog.

Tracey's Life said...

How sad is that people want to pretend your children are theirs??? I wonder if she would like to chip in towards their college funds?

I can't imagine how violating it must feel - sorry!

Jennifer said...

Good grief! People really irritate me and I don't know why they do these sorts of things. What do you need to do, have text written across your entire image for someone not to use it?

Brennan S said...

I'm glad you found out and where able to stop her. How crazy. People do stupid things online.

Anonymous said...

Ugh people are sick. I'm glad the person who saw it turned them in!

Jessica said...

Pathetic! There's ways to put code in your blog so that people can't click on your photos to see them bigger and also so that they can't right click on a picture to save it (they'll get a popup with text of your choice such as "Don't even think about it. I'll gladly let you save this picture for a 'small' fee. Just ask first!")

Christina said...

After I first heard about people stealing pictures of triplets over at Michele's blog I started to get a little parniod about my own blog. Then we had someone scam the life savings from an elderly family member by pretending to be my husband around the same time. So I made my blog private and then started a new one. Trying to keep our names and personal information off of it. Also planning on trying to keep faces out of their pictures or something. Wonder if code so people can't copy or save pictures could be added to the blog. Been ages since I've done any website building and I was never very good, but seems like that was something that could be done. No right clicking allowed or something.

So sorry to hear that this has happened to both you and Pam as well. I love your blogs and the thought of someone stealing not just your work, but images of your kids makes me ill.

LaurenLC said...

Sorry that you're having to deal with this... What sad lives people must lead to have to steal other people's pictures and pass them off as their own.

Amy said...

I think it is possible to use some code to prevent right-clicking of your photos to save them, as pp mentioned. Have you tried that?

Sarah said...

Pam - I forgot about your boys being girls. LOL

For this situation, I am almost positive that it was a teen.

I tried doing the right click code before and it didn't work plus I have had people tell me not to bother b/c it is easy to lift pictures even if you can't right click.

Adriane said...

That is horrifying. Glad you were able to stop it. I went private about a year ago after I read a post from a blog i folloe whose pictures were stolen and saved to some pervs flickr account - along with other little boys pics. Yuck!

Elyssa said...

ugh!!

Macchiatto said...

I hate that this happened to you. Had to laugh at your last line though. ;)

(And yeah, I've heard the same thing about it being easy to lift pictures even if you can't right-click.)

Mommy, Esq. said...

I really just don't understand why people would plagiarize photos like that. What is the point? Whenever I hear things like that I always think - "who are these people" because I don't know anyone who would do that.

Angela said...

I honestly don't know what to say. People are stupid. People are selfish. Some people are literally insane.

You might want to try to do a faint, white, watermark across your entire picture, especially by the girls. I know it sucks, but you can save a watermarked copy for your blog and only have a non-watermarked copy for your personal use.

Also, as well intended as people have been about the no right click code, the point is moot. Anyone who knows how to capture a screen shot (very easy to do, especially on a Mac when you can specifically choose which part of the screen to capture) can still steal your images. I use Command-Shift-4 all of the time on my Macbook to capture images for my blog (I ALWAYS link back to the source and I NEVER post pictures of other peoples' kids...just FYI.)

I truly hope you come up with a solution to protect your kids/family as well as share your lovely pictures with the world!

xo,
A

Oh and if you know who this psycho lady is, I highly recommend you block her from your blog!

KimB said...

Really scary. I've met a couple of these people on forums - obviously outed. The pictures (both pregnancy and baby pictures) they choose to steal are always of very cute bellies/babies, so at least you can kind of see it as a compliment. I know, eyeroll.