My picture was STOLEN and used in testimonial!

Wow, i just went on her website
my anti-virus alerted me 'This website is suspicious. Please leave now unless you know it's safe'
DODGEY DEALINGS!
 
OP, I'm sorry this happened to you. This has happened to a number of members in the past. That's why some people watermark their pics.
 
danysedai said:
That is awful...
ladies, I've also seen stolen pictures in a beauty and hair blog. This blogger posted pictures of her dominican salon experience and,although she credited one rollerset picture to the correct blogger, she then posted a picture of Dee at beautylogic.com who has a beautiful head of hair and did not credit her and let people assume it was HER hair. People were complimenting her on her hair and she never once corrected them. When Dee contacted the blogger, she said the pictures were not copyrighted so she could use them as she saw fit :/
pathetic
Click to expand...

Wow are you serious?! That's so pathetic! Not as pathetic as this person selling the book, but dayum.
 
I'm sorry that happened to you AlliCat. I hope that you are able to get this issue resolved.
It is unfortunate she would violate someone else's personal freedom to gain, as well as the fact that she is being fraudulent by using others pics as testimonials. Even if the testimonials are real and those people sent in the pics she is still responsible. Something like that she needed to perform her own study and take her own pictures to be on the safe side.

Ladies if you have a fotki already and dont want to go back and watermark your pics you can change your settings :
Select >Go To>My Account> in the Settings section you should see Albums on the right (under Folder) and you can fix it to where you are the only one who can right click and share your pics. Also you can set it to where you and your pics aren't in the search engine nor available to random Fotki members
 
gadgetdiva said:
I'm sorry that happened to you AlliCat. I hope that you are able to get this issue resolved.
It is unfortunate she would violate someone else's personal freedom to gain, as well as the fact that she is being fraudulent by using others pics as testimonials. Even if the testimonials are real and those people sent in the pics she is still responsible. Something like that she needed to perform her own study and take her own pictures to be on the safe side.

Ladies if you have a fotki already and dont want to go back and watermark your pics you can change your settings :
Select >Go To>My Account> in the Settings section you should see Albums on the right (under Folder) and you can fix it to where you are the only one who can right click and share your pics. Also you can set it to where you and your pics aren't in the search engine nor available to random Fotki members
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I just went in and disabled right-click on my album and other privileges.
Many of my older photos are watermarked and I now mark all photos I post on either my blog or fotki.
 
Don't just threaten legal action. Report the site to Better Business Bureau, Consumer Protection Agencies, etc. I don't know the law in the US, but under the law here, what this person did would be "false and misleading statements" under the consumer protection legislation. So I would report this IMMEDIATELY to any federal consumer protection agency there is, and provide them with the link, the name of the site owner, etc.
 
AlliCat said:
I sent them an email demanding them to remove our pics or we will take legal action.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what you should've done. Good luck and you should have put a time limit on it. I'd give it a week tops, and then be prepared for the lawyer to send papers.
 
In everyone's complaints to the BBB and the site mention the compensation (500 dollars for before and after pictures) mentioned on the site to emphasize the scam.
 
Neith said:
So the woman on the book isn't truly the "author" as well.

The whole site is shameful. Just a mess. It won't survive for long.
Click to expand...

He may have stolen the picture of the "doctor" or purchased it from a site like Getty Images. You can purchase all kinds of stock photos to decorate your website. Type in "black woman" and hundreds of pics are available for purchase (legally).

westNDNbeauty said:
I say that because some are people are saying they will send emails that say something legal thing but don't have an action plan behind it. Since this guy does have a direct link to this thread, he can see many threats may be empty. Him knowing some threats are empty is not going to garner the result we want.
Click to expand...

I totally agree.

Neith said:
The site is so shady I'd be surprised if there actually was a book. :lol:
Click to expand...

This was EXACTLY what I was thinking. There is probably no book. He just gets people's money, or the book is a compilation of stolen stuff from different hair forums.

This is disturbing on many levels - stealing pics, lying, and trying to prey on black women. The saddest part is that if he shuts this site down, he'll just do the same thing under a different URL.
 
about fotki....having your fotki link in your signature makes it more likely that you will fall victim to stolen pictures. If you have 3,000 posts, then your fotki link is showing up that many times on the internet for RANDOM people to click on. You can minimize (not eliminate) your risk by doing the following:

1) not putting your fotki link in your signature
2) instead, put it under your profile
3) password protecting it or make it available for view only to fotki members
4) watermarking your pictures (I need to do this!)
5) don't use the same username for fotki and the hair boards
6) we need to stop making those "post your fotki" threads
7) don't take face pictures!!!!

I was on facebook for five years, but I started to find it disturbing how people I barely knew were tracking my life. I remember when I first joined, my mom WARNED me that people will steal your pictures...I thought she was CRAZY, but I did take all pictures of my son off of facebook. If I re-join facebook, I will only add my family as friends.

Facebook, fotki, and so many websites are all about advertising and revenue; they have no problem compromising your personal information. I pretty much use my fotki for me. I picture share with my fotki friends only. The unfortunate part is that my Facebook friends have hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures on me that will still be on the internet. My ex-boyfriend was not on facebook, yet he is in dozens on of albums and he was often pissed that he had no control over his own image.

Facebook's product is YOU & your personal information.
 
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^^ also, even if you display your fotki link, a way to protect it is by having your password to fotki not listed in siggy or profile and requesting that people have to pm or email you (along with being a member of fotki and the online hair community in some way) to view can help avoid unwanted visitors (because cant non members still view profile information here? so if you put your pw in profile, nonmembers can still get access to it... or has that changed).

Also, in addition to being careful and posting only pics that your comfortable with, disabling the right click feature on fotki and watermarking, you have to remember that people can still get a screenshot/screengrab of your picture, so even disabling right click wont protect against ruthless thieves.
 
im not even a victim, and i feel violated. this takes the fun out of our hair hobby. people who we admire may stop posting updates, we have to be paranoid and scared of posting pictures of our own progress... it just takes some of the fun out of this whole hair hobby thing...

i wanted to restart my fotki and start taking pics of my hair again, and i think i still will, but with caution, but i just feel bad about the scams and thieves out there. I used to post pics of my 7 year old dd's hair (because shes her moms daughter and is into hair too), and even gave her a fotki folder full of her hair pics and accessories (and she knows i want to restart and wants to join me), all of her pics has been taken down a while ago, but now i dont know if i'll do that again anymore...
 
I found this link of "OUR GUY, TRENTTON" asking for a loan for his e-book business (2 years ago):


My business Looking For a loan fast for ...

I really liked the response of the poster who questioned why he needed a loan if he thought he could repay in two weeks. Oh, and the one who asked what was he selling that was so "unique"...These people could smell "shadiness" from a mile away!


I REALLY want to track down and corner this crook!!!!
 
The owner of that site is probably a lurker or member here or one of the other hair boards. Dishonesty will also get you so far.
 
Hmmmm, I'm wondering if this is someone who is actually making their money per click. Meaning everyone who clicks on the site and its pages generates money for the site owner.

We could just be lining his grimy pockets anyway.
 
CelinaStarr said:
Pokahontas, I'd hate for you to delete your pretty pictures, but I understand. :( I plan on locking my page if things get too bad.
Click to expand...

Aww thanks Celina. I hate to do it, I love my hair hobby. It sucks that it has to be this way. I will still do updates but i will be much more careful about editing face shots and making sure to watermark. BTW....does anyone know how to blur out a face shot? I know how to put an image over it but not how to blur it out like i've seen people do here.
 
This is certainly a shame. I had a picture in my siggy that I took on Saturday after my hair appointment. I removed it.

OP, please keep us updated.
 
Thx for "mentioning" me in this thread. I'm just reading this. Yep, one of those pics are of me as well. I just sent the website an email.
 
Natirel Me ! said:
Did anyone get a email back?
Click to expand...

I sent him an email a few days ago when I found out about this whole thing telling him that he used my pic without my concent and I want him to take it down right away. I just got an email back from him today. Its pretty much a load of crap in my opinion but I will copy paste for you all to read:

we apologize for that those pics were sent in from users! we will take them down immediatley thank u
 
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