At the end of last week I got a comment on one of my posts (from a long time ago) telling me that someone on Twi.tter was using pictures of B and leading everyone to believe it was her child. This person gave me 2 links.
I nearly fainted.
Then I looked at the accounts of these 2 people. One is a girl and the other is a boy...supposedly. They are engaged...supposedly. They have a child and she is pregnant with twins...supposedly. I say supposedly because, in my opinion, most or all of the pictures on these accounts are stolen. They are all cropped weird and you can tell people have been cut out of them. For example, there is a maternity picture where the older child and male are cropped out...it just looks funny. In one picture she looks very dark skinned with dark hair and in her maternity pictures she has very light skin with blonde hair. She also uses multiple different babies saying that is her older daughter (including pictures of MY child).
There are pictures of B on both accounts and "she" cropped out my watermark.
At first, the mama bear in me started raging. I looked through every single tw.eet these 2 accounts had. How dare they steal pictures of my child? Who is this person acting like this is their child...again, HOW DARE THEY??? Who is the person that commented to tell me? How did they know? Their blogger profile had just been created and had 2 views...both me. I stayed up for hours thinking about what I could do.
I am not on Twi.tter and I know absolutely nothing about it. I do know that this person posted these pics of B last November and none since then. There are quite a few of her and they are all from only one of my posts...no other pictures from any other post have been posted on this account of Blakely. The accounts do have pictures of other babies (I am sure stolen) and "she" says they are her daughter as well.
The fact that they are from only one post makes me think "she" just found my post through a Go.ogle search, downloaded the pics and then moved on. What do y'all think? Both accounts still actively tw.eet but nothing again of B.
I am torn about what to do about this entire situation.
In the beginning I was pissed. I almost took my blog down. I wanted to call the fucking owner or whatever of Twit.ter. I nearly called my cop friend. HA! My husband was a bit more chill about it. He says it was just a picture. It wasn't like she was pretending B was her daughter and stealing all of her pics. (Side note....if she was stealing only pictures of Blakely, I am pretty sure he would have flipped. He would probably still be hunting this person down. He has connections!) She was pretending she had a daughter and stealing a bunch of baby pics to fake it...she did a terrible job of it by the way. I think anyone who follows her should be able to tell that it isn't the same child! He is in favor of me watermarking all of her pictures though.
So what to do? I am not versed in all things blog. I am not sure if I need a copyright and I still don't know if that would stop people from taking my pictures. I looked into it but that is mostly for your content...which doesn't bring out my mama bear side. Just the pictures...
I do use a watermark...sometimes. I should do better. From most of my research since this happened that is the best thing you can do. I have been going back and putting the watermark across her face in every single picture. That way if someone does take it then it can't be cropped out or hidden.
I love blogging and I want to be able to do it and protect Blakely as well. I don't care if people take MY picture. I am able to make that decision for myself. I do care, however, if people steal pictures of her and use them. Blakely is not able to make the decision as to whether she wants to put her face on the internet. I am making that decision for her. As her mother, I want to do the safest thing for her. I want to protect her. That is my job.
So, advice? Is a watermark the best thing? How do you recommend doing that? I have an app on my Mac but I don't really like it. I want something that will watermark an entire folder of photos but then I can manipulate each picture so it is over her face. I don't have Photos.hop but I am willing to get it.
Should I get a copyright for my blog? Do you have one? Is it easy to get?
Have any of you ever had this experience? Did you get mean to a bitch on Twit.ter like I want to? Did you call your cop friend? ;) Seriously though...help! I want to feel comfortable blogging. I will do whatever it takes to make it that way.
Oh my gosh! HOW TERRIBLE! I will hunt this girl down too...let's storm the castle together! In all seriousness, I know nothing about privacy except that I try to keep IRL people away from my blog and have my blogger settings set so my blog is private from google. Let me know what you find out about private with photos and stuff. Why creeps have to steal pictures makes NO sense other than they must have VERY boring lives and are losers. UGH.
ReplyDeleteI've heard of these stories and that is exactly why I put a watermark on all of my pictures of Chloe, and usually over her face. It does take away from the photos a bit, but people get the idea, and I feel like I'm protecting myself as best I can while posting pictures on the internet. I use Lightroom to add the watermark. The one thing I find a bit frustrating with it is I don't think you can place the watermark just anywhere, it's usually top, middle, or bottom of the picture. I just do my best to get some of her face covered.
ReplyDeleteI don't know anything about copyrighting a blog, and even right-click disabling doesn't do anything. People can still take a screenshot and use the picture that way.
Why do people have to be such losers like Heather said? Get a life! And quit stealing other people's pictures and trying to pass them off as your own. I guess you can take it to mean she thought you had one cute kid! :)
I had to come back and add that I went to look at some of my recent posts, and the watermark isn't necessarily over her face, but somewhere on her body. And even then I've gotten a little lax lately about the placement. But if I had the ability to put that watermark wherever I pleased, I'd definitely do it over her face more. Stories like this make me think about it more carefully.
DeleteI have been using MultiWatermarks and you can place the watermark wherever you want. You can also add it to a folder of pictures but then when you adjust one of those pics it adjusts for them all...but the face isn't in the same position on each pic. So I do it one by one. And I am going to continue to do that. I get lazy about it too but it PISSES me off that the photos that were stolen did have my watermark on them...just cropped off of her image. UGH...
DeleteIn one pic Lonnie was cradling her in his arm and the watermark was on his arm right by her face...cropped that out too!
I have been going back and fixing all of my posts with the watermark and it is tedious and I am already getting lazy. But all I have to do is go back to that damn Twit.ter account and then I get fired up again!
how do you right click disable? i suppose they could still take a screen shot, but at least it may deter some people if it's not as easy to get the photos?!
DeleteSarah, I think it's just a gadget you can add in Blogger. Here is a link about how to do it: http://www.tricksmachine.com/2010/03/disable-right-click-blogger.html.
ReplyDeleteKelly I'll have to check out that program. I save them on each of my pictures too so it wouldn't be any more work than what I'm already doing. Thanks for sharing the program. I hear ya on people cropping out the watermark if it's not in just the right spot. This person had to have been a seriously bad cropper-outer (totally just made that word up) and the pictures look completely fake for what you describe. I would still be livid though.
Wow! That is crazy! I might have to start watermarking. I've been lazy about starting.
ReplyDeleteWOW! I never expect this to happen to anyone I know, that is crazy and makes me so angry, especially since she cropped out a watermark. The right click disable is okay, but people can still use a snipping tool to take pictures if they really want to. That's kinda weird the person who contacted you knew how to find you/knew it was your kid. It always freaks me out when I see in my stats that people Google things like "cute baby girls" or "baby girl with brown eyes" or something along those lines and find my blog. It makes me wonder why the hell people are searching for those things. If I were you I would contact the people on Twitter (or the makers of Twitter themselves) and let them know they need to take those pics down!
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness!!!! :( This is so crazy and scary and horrible!! I am so sorry that this happened. I would have felt just like you did when you first found out. Who does that?!?! Ugg. So many creeps in this world. I hate it!! :( This has definitely got me thinking because I don't even use Watermarks on Alidia's photos. The first thing I am going to work on is making my blog more private, then I'll decide from there. I really want to keep blogging AND sharing photos, but this freaks me out!! :(
ReplyDeleteWOW. That is awful and ridiculous!!
ReplyDeleteFound my way over here and glad I did! New follower :)) I'm a new mama and love following other moms :))
www.sashon.blogspot.com
Yikes! That is awful! What the hell is wrong with people. I need to look into this more. I haven't watermarked anything and I really should. So scary!
ReplyDeleteThis is just crazy! I'd be as freaked out as you! I totally, totally, don't get why anyone would do this. I haven't ever used watermarks, and I probably should, but now that I moved from Blogger to Wordpress, I've started password protecting old photos and videos of Mira. The internet can be a freaky place. :/
ReplyDeleteI have read posts about bloggers being worried about this but I didn't think too much of it until reading this. Ugh! Weirdos! And I would be like you... who commented to tell you... that's a little strange too. So... now you are having to go back through each post to watermark pictures or is there another way? Geez! So sorry, that stinks:[
ReplyDelete