Perpetual Vigilance
January 23rd, 2013
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
I don’t know if it’s age, cynicism or personal general grumpiness but there seem to be a lot more villains around now than when I were a lad.
If you run a shop, shrinkage is the name you give to shoplifting. I guess it’s endemic. If you run a website like fotoLibra, you make sure you are as well protected as possible from shoplifters, or hackers if we use a general term for web-based criminality.
To put it in terms that I understand, we have to stop thieves. We have two sorts — those who want to steal your photographs, and those who want to steal our money. The latter is far more common, I’m sorry to say.
Stealing photographs, first of all. The basic fact is they can’t, not unless they can design and mount an incredibly expensive and sophisticated assault on our firewalled servers. But frankly, we’re not Cartier or Tiffany. It’s much cheaper to buy an image from us than spend months trying to figure out how to steal it. So there’s little incentive. The few infringements we do spot are people using fotoLibra watermarked Previews on their websites, on the basis that if it’s on the internet, it must be free. On behalf of our Pro and Platinum members, we have successfully sued every commercial infringer we have discovered in our jurisdiction.
Stealing money is far more devious, and we fell for it once — and only once. This is how it works. First ‘You’ steal someone’s credit card details. Then You join fotoLibra as a free member and upload one picture. Then You join fotoLibra as a buyer, using the name on the stolen credit card. Then You buy the picture You’ve just uploaded for a humungous amount of money, using Your stolen credit card.
Unfortunately for You, we at fotoLibra scrutinise every sale carefully, and if something doesn’t look right, we pounce — unlike lethargic banks and credit card companies.
There was an incident last year when an Indonesian photographer uploaded a couple of images and six hours later two separate women in the USA signed up as buyers and bought his images for large sums of money. We notify photographers of sales every 30 days, but somehow our Indonesian chummy felt sure his images had been sold long before we would have informed him and pestered us daily to pay him ‘his’ money. We didn’t, and six weeks later the bank removed the entire amount from our account, citing credit card fraud. Strange that we never heard back from the photographer after we informed him a criminal investigation was under way.
Yesterday and today we made two big image sales, both of (I’m sorry to say) of unremarkable images, both uploaded by different Vietnamese photographers. One was bought for a great deal of money by an Australian, the other for nearly as much money by a lady in Leicestershire.
Now if my name is Gwyn Headley, I can’t for the life of me see why I should open a Hotmail account under the name of phil.bennett.1972@hotmail.com. It’s just not logical. So when we saw the lady in Leicestershire — let’s call her Lulu Leicester — had ‘bought’ the image using the email address Debbie Derby the first warning bells began to ring.
We searched for ‘Lulu Leicester’ online, and found a telephone number for her. She is a respected academic. We rang her and asked ‘Have you recently bought a photograph from fotoLibra.com?’ No, she hadn’t heard of us. ‘Does your credit card end in 1234?’ Yes, it does. “Cancel it immediately,’ we said, ‘it has been compromised and has been used in an attempt to commit fraud.’
We haven’t contacted the Australian gentleman, but as he signed up as a buyer seven minutes after the second Vietnamese photographer joined up and uploaded his one photograph we suspect he’s probably not what he claims to be.
All this takes time and vigilance. The scam works this way: we pay 50% of the money we receive to the photographer, the thieves prove the use of a working credit card and go on to empty its resources in a matter of hours. Six weeks later (it’s always a little over six weeks, never any quicker) the banks wake up and deduct the money from our account, never informing us in advance.
The Australian purchaser tried three different credit cards in three different names before the fourth went through. We cancelled these transactions immediately.
We can track these people down — we know where they are — and we would be happy to pass the information on to the competent authority. The trouble is, who has the authority? And are they competent?
Wouldn’t it be nice if the banks were as alert as we try to be?
Why not send this out as a press release to the press in general and see who picks it up, some politician may jump on the band wagon or some banks may even realise that they can improve their processes!
Good luck
Very good point, David. I have now sent this to all the national newspapers. But as I’m not 15 years old, female or Californian, what possible interest can they have in us?
For the case of stolen images with watermark, why don’t you do as other website do ( such as Formula1.com ) and prevent people to save the pictures on their desktop ? I’m sure it’s easy to do !
You just have to right click and save the picture…that’s it ! that’s too easy…
I ran a scan with my photos on fotolibra and found dozens of stolen photos all over the web !
Give us the FOT numbers and the web addresses of your stolen lo-res watermarked Previews — read the blog to see why they aren’t your actual images — and we will do something about it for you.
Unfortunately, it paus to be paranoid these days. We too are having similar problems in Texas and New Zealand, and have decided to cancel credit card transactions. The system is still not bullet proof.
If we don’t accept credit cards, we’d lose 70% of our turnover.
Gwyn,
I for one would have no problems if you routinely paid photographers 6 weeks or more after a sale. Therefore you could spend more time marketing pictures instead of policing transactions.
The time saved would still have to be spent some time. I sliding into philosophical speculation here …
I agree with David and Mark.
Send out a press release and see who jumps on it and if that might lead to more vigilance at the banks – we live in hope!
I would also not mind waiting 6 weeks or more to be paid and definitely believe that the time should be spent on marketing images and trying to improve sales. After all that is why we are here and surely in these incredibly tough times, vigilance is as always important, but image sales must and should come first.
It was a good idea, and I’ve done it. No response as yet.
very ‘nice’ story and I really appreciate your very alert reaction. We all want them to be penalized hard I think.
Thank you Jan!
Thanks for doing what you do.
And thank you, Brenda!
+1 to Mark and the two Davids: get this into the press. It’ll have the added bonus of promoting Fotolibra, and by association – us!
Agreed!
I suppose this sort of scam is a result of the recent popularity of sites such as ebay and Amazon where individual users can offer goods for sale. In the early days of internet shopping, if you’ve stolen somebody else’s credit card details, you’d have to just buy physical goods off the internet and then set up a fake address to receive them, then (if you don’t want to keep them) sell them somehow. Now, somebody can offer goods for sale on ebay or Amazon or indeed fotolibra, buy them using stolen credit card details and be paid cash (you don’t even need to actually own and deliver the goods). Companies like ebay have huge resources to prevent this type of fraud, and if they fall for the odd one, they’re so rich they don’t care. That’s why relatively small sites like fotolibra are far more tempting targets for fraudsters. The volume of fotolibra sales to individuals is probably too small to justify investing in sophisticated fraud prevention software, but maybe you could try imitating some of the procedures of sites like ebay
Waiting 6 weeks for payment is not a problem, an elderly neighbour had a phone call the other day and gave her bank details over the phone, she suddenly panicked afterwards and rang her bank who verified they had not called her and closed the account. The neighbour got a phone call back from the same person later asking why she had changed her bank details !! Be vigilant in everything I would say.
Actually Terrence, you’re right, there’s something quite pleasing to realise that poor little fotoLibra is the target of international Vietnam-based crime syndicates. At least it shows we have a global reach!
Our bank HSBC actively ENCOURAGES us to give people our bank details, and German businesses routinely print them on their letterheads. With that info you can pay in, but (theoretically) you can’t draw out.
Why does this not surprise me. , why should they care a dam when they openly buy poached elephant ivory and rhino horns…Rob weaver …Stop Elephant and Rhino Poaching on Facebook…
What surprises me is that they have the time to do this instead of trying to earn an honest living.
Scams are every where these days and sadly, this is the new world we live in. We will never see an end to them. Screeing is the key. Scammers dont have the time to “butter” someone or a page up before unleashing there plan. I dont know if it is possible for you to “screen” people before they join, But it may be worth a try. I dont want to ruffle any feathers, but, normally people that get scammed have no idea on how the internet works. An easy way to stay safe is to SUSPECT EVERYONE. Don’t trust anything. I have dodged a few bullets now and some where pretty convincing, but dodged I did. Your doing a fine job Gwyn and its sad to say, bunker down, because this war will not end for you sadly.
Thanks Bren. I like to think we’re pretty savvy but as I said in the blog, we were taken in by this scam the first time and lost £850. We’re sadder and wiser now.
http://www.fotouristen.de/fotos/meine
Gerne moechte ich ihnen weitere mehr kostenlos Bilder Hochladen.
Senden sie mir bitte den entsprecheneden Zugang zu.
Wie lade ich Bilder hoch bei Ihnen?
MfG, Manfred Sobottka
von der Insel Phuket / Thailand
(Google uebersetzung)
Gladly I would like them more more free Upload.
Please send them to me to correspond eden access.
How do I add pictures to you?
Regards, Manfred Sobottka
from Phuket / Thailand
Hi Manfred. Easy — http://www.fotolibra.com/seller/portfolio/upload/options.php
The problem with the current economic system is that promotion is by ingratiation. The means that low quality have made it to the top of the tree. Most of the top people are only happy with like minded individuals around them.
Rather sad.
regards Nicholl
Hi Nicholl, how true. I remember my first day as a PR trainee: the advice I was given was “Start at the bottom — then lick it.”
Banks only care about fraud when they have to reach into their own profits to pay out the victim. In this case they just charge back the actual victim so they have lost nothing hence they don’t give a monkeys about it. Once banks have to compensate for fraud then they’ll start actively doing something about it. I think there should be a charge back time limit. At the moment cheques can’t be reversed after they’ve cleared so it should be the same with card transactions. Allow them the 7 days or they take the hit. I’m sure they’d become a lot more vigilant!
Banks won’t change unless they have financial pain imposed for not doing the right thing.
And when banks don’t do the right thing they are bailed out with our money. This scam has now been perpetrated on us about 10 times. The bank and credit card companies have not made one move to ameliorate the situation.
And he’s back! Today another Australian gent bought the same photograph from our successful Vietnamese photographer, this time for £350. So his price is going down.
I had my PC Hacked last year and I am still sorting out the mess 6-months later. The incident lost me a lot of images and files. I was lucky that I produce back ups of all my photographs on CD as soon as I download them. It is a nightmare trying to keep ones PC safe even with good quality anti-virus and Firewall installed. I have to say I have had two incidents with Credit Cards and both times the Card supplier was on the ball.Mike Reed
Every image you upload to fotoLibra is securely stored, and you can always download them back to a new machine.
Sono assolutamente d’accordo! Ma si dovrebbe fare qualcosa, quanto meno arrivare ad avere una eco sulla stampa…e forse, come dice bene David Walker, le banche potrebbero migliorare i loro servizi!
Hi Gwyn
There are plenty of “boat people” Vietmanese immigrants in Australia so your friendly Australians are probably cousins of the one from Vietnam.
Makes a change from Nigerians!
Never thought of that Len, but you could be right.
The reason for joining fotolibra was the security is very very good
so folks fight the good fight
Neil
[…] ….This is how it works. First ‘You’ steal someone’s credit card details. Then You join fotoLibra as a free member and upload one picture. Then You join fotoLibra as a buyer, using the name on the stolen credit card. Then You buy the picture You’ve just uploaded for a humungous amount of money, using Your stolen credit card…. …There was an incident last year when an Indonesian photographer uploaded a couple of images and six hours later two separate women in the USA signed up as buyers and bought his images for large sums of money. We notify photographers of sales every 30 days, but somehow our Indonesian chummy felt sure his images had been sold long before we would have informed him and pestered us daily to pay him ‘his’ money. We didn’t,… read Gwyn’s full account here […]