When you first receive one of these scam image emails it can be pretty scary. You may be worried that you’re in trouble with the law or that you could end up losing money. This post takes a look at exactly what these scam emails are, how to tell if they’re genuine and what you can do about them.
I have to admit, the first time I received one of these emails it did freak me out a bit. I sent it to another blogger who said it was probably a scam, but I was still worried.
The person that sent it then chased it a couple of days later, which had me even more worried. Eventually, I found the image in question, replied with a link to the website I’d used it on and never heard another thing.
What Are Scam Image Emails?
Scam image emails are actually sent by dodgy link builders who are essentially trying to scare you into giving a free link as an image credit.
Often the link they are trying to get you to add has nothing to do with the image in question. It’s usually not to a photographer or blogger either.
Here’s a summary of what the email said. I’ve since had the exact same email from five other people. When you’re new to blogging it can be pretty daunting to receive this type of email.
‘You are using my client’s image (attached below) in one of your articles. There’s no issue if you’ve bought this from our market partners such as Shutterstock, iStock, Getty Image, Pexels, Adobe, Pixabay, Unsplash etc.
If you don’t have the proper license for the image then we request you to provide image credits (clickable link) on your article. Or else this will be against the copyright policy.
Unfortunately, removing the image isn’t the solution since you have been using our image on your website for a while now’
How To Tell If It’s Real or Fake
If you have accidentally used an image belonging to the photographer, it’s likely the email would come directly from them with proof that they owned the image and include a link to their website or from a solicitor working on their behalf.
This scam email doesn’t mention who the image belongs to or whether there is any proof of ownership. It was sent by a lady claiming to be from a website that was very new and lacked basics like contact details and a privacy policy.
The email uses the term ‘bought’ when lots of the websites mentioned provide free stock images. This is another tactic to try and scare you into thinking you’ve done something wrong by not paying for the image in the first place.
If all else fails, you can email back either asking for evidence of ownership or with a link to the image on the stock image site. More often than not, you won’t hear anything back.
If you can’t remember where the image is from then doing a reverse image search might help.
How You Can Protect Yourself
There are few ways you can protect yourself when it comes to scam image emails.
First, you could always add attributes to any free stock images you use on your website. If you get this type of email it makes it quick and easy to provide a link to exactly where you got the image from should you need to.
Even though the email says not to, you could just delete and change the image for added peace of mind. If the scammer keeps bothering you then you could block their email address from contacting you again.
Always Use Free or Paid Stock Images
There are lots of places to source free stock images as a blogger. You can also purchase stock images, for example, Lyrical Host has an amazing stock photo package, or you could pay a monthly subscription to somewhere like Canva.
Never just take images from Google or other websites. My go-to website for completely free stock images is Unsplash.
While easier said than done, you could also only use your own images on your blog. Although, some bloggers have even had these scam emails about images they actually own and had taken themselves!
It’s worth mentioning that there have been a few incidences of bloggers and photographers images ending up on Pixabay for free, without their permission. I know for this reason lots of bloggers won’t use Pixabay even though they have free to use images.
One final thing you can do is have blogging insurance to protect yourself. This means if some real, legal issue with an image were to crop up, you would have insurance to cover any legal costs.
I’ve now had so many of these emails across all of my sites, all with the exact same wording, I simply bin them and move on with my day!
