Whoa- Someone using my photo!

[Finnie]

I was just cruising around Hoobly for the fun of it, and I run across an ad for Fawn Owl finches which catches my eye. So I click on it to take a look, and the guy's photo looks awfully familiar, just like my hen Fern, from this thread: http://finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26658

So much like Fern, even down to the same color leg ring, that I had to check my own photo, and IT IS MY PHOTO!!

Man, I know it's common for people to steal photos off the internet and pass them off as their own, but I never expected it to be one of mine. And this Hoobly member, I've seen lots of his ads before. Now I feel like he must not be on the up and up.

Here is the link to the Hoobly ad, although if he takes his ad down, the link will stop working. Fern is the first photo, and I wonder if the other two photos were also taken from the internet. http://www.hoobly.com/PShl/fawn-owl-finches.htm

The same Hoobly user has another ad for Chestnut Breasted Mannikins, and one of those photos is obviously a stock photo he got from somewhere. It seems more understandable to use a professional looking stock photo if you don't have one of your own, because then people can tell it's not the actual bird they will be buying. But to try to trick people that you own the bird in the photo?

[cindy]

Send an message to the seller tell him he is using your picture and to remove it, if he does not notify the classified customer service....flag the ad. It is misleading advertising. Finnie, do you have a program to watermark you pictures?

[30 Seconds to Bob]

Crazy stuff! I've seen some of my old canary pics on Google Images. Always surprises me when (and how) they turn up. Bob

[debbie276]

Google has images from websites with a link to go to the site.
Stealing an image to use in your own add and pass off as your own is totally different. I would definitely contact the seller and if he doesn't take it down flag and report it.

[Finnie]

I'm not so much worried about someone using my photos, as I would be about the unsuspecting internet shoppers who answer the ad because they think the seller has that exact bird.

I might contact him, but I'm a little worried that if he's a scammer, he might be phishing for people's email addresses. So I might rather go the route of reporting him to Hoobly. But then, Hoobly is run single handedly by a guy named Peter, and he probably can't/won't deal with every person who gets complained about.

Plus, there was an example of this exact same thing in a budgie ad here in Indiana a couple of days ago. When my friend notified the seller that their photos of "English" budgie babies were not English but just regular American, then the very next day the photos were changed. Now his male and female baby budgies have photos of two very adult male budgies, but at least this time he got the English right!

So the guy might take my photo off if I tell him to, but he will just right click on the next photo down. I did notice when I searched for fawn owl images, that all three of the photos he used in the ad came from different sources.

[Finnie]

Crazy stuff! I've seen some of my old canary pics on Google Images. Always surprises me when (and how) they turn up. Bob

Anything you post on the internet can be found by search engines. For those of us with a website, you can maximize your potential to be found by customers who are searching, if you put special headers on your pages, and if you put tags on your photos. But I have found that it's just the regular text on the page itself that brings a photo up in a Google image search.

For instance, the fawn owl image search also brought up my other photos of non- owl finches that were on the same page.

Sometimes I think it's fun to search certain combinations of budgie mutations to see photos of pretty budgies, and I can't believe that with all the thousands of budgie photos on the internet, my lil ol' birds show up a lot!

[CindyOH]

Report it to Peter for sure. He has helped me before. Before you know your photo will be on TShirts and Coffee mugs and your getting zero from it.
Cindy

[Nerien]

Could be worse. Once again, someone has made a phony email under my name, and then submits it with my name and phone number for insurance quotes, resulting in my being bombarded with dozens of phone calls answering "my request for information". Last time it traced back to kitemail.com, and a very pissed of gentleman who was tired of his site being used for phoney email addresses under the names of angry people like me (so set up some type of review or security, instead of letting just anyone open an email on your server, jerk!). This time it traced back to the University of Virginia, who is now working on obliterating my phoney email so I won't keep getting insurance sales calls. Hopefully they can catch the little rat this time.

[Vargur]

Shame this happens..

Happened to me.. I saw I think two of my photos in a finch site
he was not selling I think, but he didnt ask for permission to use my photos
so I wrote on his online guestbook why he is stealing my photos.
I closed the website! well I cant find it anymore

But I am glad many people ask for permission though..

[Kernel]

Finnie, You're correct that is your photo right down to the headline on the newspaper. I don't think you have to be too concerned about being scammed. If you notice he left an encrypted phone number, so to speak, (instead of using the number "9" he wrote it "nine") This will discourage automated "spiders" from finding phone numbers for the purpose of scamming. Secondly if your photo is not copywrited and available for public viewing I don't believe it is illegal for him to "Steal it". In my opinion it is unethical though. You can put a tag on your photos, but the problem with that is, that tag might identify you so be sure you use a non personal type tag. Look at it this way, the Owl finch he is trying to sell may be inferior to yours, so he used your Owl to to sell his. Kinda of like a compliment to your outstanding finch. If it was me I would just ignore it and don't worry about it. Kernel

[Finnie]

Thanks, Elma and Kernel.

I did end up writing to Peter (Owner of Hoobly) and telling him about the situation. I told him that I didn't want to write to the guy personally, because then he would have my email address, so I was just letting Peter know so that he could handle it according to whatever policies Hoobly may have.

[dgoose]

I use photos from the web to identify or represent but not to sell, sometimes you cant trace the owner of the original for permission. Your owl finch looks beautiful and healthy so it is a great example to show someone what a healthy fawn owl finch looks like.
Almost all information that helps me I share with others.http://bullfinchcorner.bravesites.com/

[Finnie]

Thank you for the compliment. The person I bought her from used to have some really nice finches. Then she sold out of them and is into hookbills now.

Well, if that Hoobly member had cared, it would have been very easy to find me from that photo, because Google images links it to my website. I'm pretty sure that the guy is trying to pass it off as the one he is selling.

[debbie276]

And I see he's still using that picture!

[Finnie]

Well, I finally sent a message to that seller and he wrote back and said that he would replace the photos with his own. He said he took the photos from the internet because he has issues trying to load his own photos.

Now his two ads are merged together with no photos. So he was pretty nice about it. That's good.