JUNE 28, 2011 UPDATE: Last night, I managed to get a hold of the man listed by GoDaddy as the owner of LowerMyPowerBill.com – you know the site with our family picture on it?
Well not anymore.
A) This very nice gentleman says it is acutally his SON who is the owner
B) Apparently they hired a web designer to do the website and it is the DESIGNER who decided to use our picture – I’m waiting on the dsigner’s info
C) He also suggested the web designer may have used a pre-set template that INCLUDED our picture (the HORROR) GO Daddy experts feel free to weigh in on this as I cannot get anyone to confirm that this is even an option – and I can’t find anything that tells me this is the case.
D) Either way – our picture is DOWN.
E) I am grateful
Welcome to the new Family endorsing LowerMyPowerBill as of today!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the record, when this link was first sent to me by one of my dear friends, I thought it was a virus and I ignored it. Sorry about that, Pablo.
But, let’s be honest… The title of the article is “Six People Who Had No Clue their Faces Were World Famous”…. and it was sent on my Facebook wall. So, I didn’t click on it. Because really? Famous faces? Clearly not me.
But then it came again via Twitter DM from my friend, Andrew. So I messaged him to ask if it was a virus…. nope. An actual article. With my face. *cough* *snort* Mine and my family’s famous faces. From two years ago.
Maybe you know the story. Maybe not.
So, here’s the Cliff Note version: A family photo of mine was taken from one of my websites -NOT FACEBOOK – and used by a store in Prague. I found out VIA FACEBOOK, when a friend from college, who lives in Prague, was driving down the street and saw the picture – life sized – in a store window. He messaged me – through FACEBOOK to tell me about it and then emailed me pictures – the ones you see in this story – the ones I originally posted on this site when I first wrote about it.
Because I often see the details of the story a) misinterpreted or b) flat out wrong AND because ‘stolen photo’ is still one of the top phrases bringing people here, I figure it is worth revisiting how this happened and how to limit the possibility of it happening to you.
Do note I didn’t say prevent it from happening.
If you would like it to be impossible for someone to steal your photos:
A) Don’t post any online
B) Purchase software that disables right clicking
Moving on…. I will break our Stolen Photo situation down in terms of ‘what not to do’…..
In my situation…. for that particular picture… in addition to it being posted on this site, I posted it on another social networking site – a Ning site (a site that allows a group of like minded people to gather, connect, and exchange ideas).
What I didn’t realize was that the site was not secure. I should have known. it was in the fine print. We will call that Mistake #1.
Mistake #2 comes in the form of posting the picture in its original resolution.
The picture was taken by a professional photographer, Gina Kelly. Gina is a friend of mine… she DID give me permission to post the pictures. She DID NOT sell the pictures to anyone. (There is another photographer by the name of Gina Kelly who does, in fact, sell some of her professional work, but MY friend doesn’t) When she gave the pictures to me, she did so in a high resolution format. Me being a true non-professional-photographer, simply posted the picture. This made blowing the picture up into a life-sized ad possible.
Mistake #3 – I labeled the picture, ‘This is my happy family’.
Sounds benign, yes? Because normally, labeling pictures is IDEAL for SEO, but this is how the shop in Prague found me. They googled ‘happy family’ and guess who popped up…. right from that non-secure Ning site? You got it. Us.
Now… in theory – Googling ‘happy family’ images should get you some stock photos – (just look at your current options) but each picture takes you to the site where the picture is housed AND lets you know the image may be subject to copyright. (JUST LIKE OURS IS)
The truth is, the store KNEW the picture was a true family simply by following the link, despite claiming to the Associated Press they had ‘no idea we were a real family’ when the story made international news.
Now, when I first learned about the picture, I posted the story for two reasons – 1) I know A LOT of people who post pictures online and figured we could all stand to be a bit smarter about the WAY we are doing it (watermarking pictures is also an option – and you can do it for free through sites like Picnik) and 2) WHAT A SMALL WORLD! What are the chances that a picture of my family would be taken offline, used half a world away in a store window and I would just so happen to have a friend who LIVES THERE to report back to me?
The amazing world of social media makes this possible. While I imagine the company who made the decision to use the picture – counting on the premise of ‘they’ll never know’ TRULY believed we would never, ever find out, now understands the likes of twitter and facebook make the world a mighty small place.
In a matter of two weeks, the story caught the attention of first social media and then the traditional media – becoming international news and prompting friends of mine to send me joking messages asking WHY we were on their Yahoo homepage when they logged in.
And, you would think, after ALL the attention surround THIS picture that it would be off limits, but unfortunately, that isn’t the case… you do still have to be vigilant. It was a full year AFTER this situation in Prague that ANOTHER friend stumbled upon this site.
The person who answered the phone at this company initially told me husband they were fully authorized to use this picture as they have a legal team who checks ahead of time, however, after being pointed to one of the many articles ABOUT this story, said she would have the CEO return our call. As you can imagine that didn’t happen, but the picture was taken down that day.
And now TODAY, June 17th, there is THIS:
How did I find this, you ask?
They are a reverse photo search website and periodically I hop on to take a look – checking to see if anyone is using our pictures – SPECIFICALLY this one. And JUST NOW, as I searched while I was writing this story…. lo and behold….
All of the other ‘finds’ on TinEye were related to the original story – news articles and blog posts.
So…. I guess it is safe to say you know who I’ll be calling as soon as I hit ‘post’ on this, yes?
Leave a Reply