Scammers man!
Not only do they steal your stuff, but then they waste your time by requiring you to chase them down. :/
This morning I was doing my normal weekly 1 hour pinning session. Right when I was about to finish up, I stumbled across an account that had redirected nearly a dozen of my pins to their website.
I took a closer look and noticed so many blogging friend names….basically this guy hijacked hundreds of pins from reputable bloggers!
I spent an hour reporting all of my stolen pins. I told everyone in my Facebook group, Adventures in Blogging, but just in case you’re not in the group, I thought I’d let you know about it.
HOW I FIND OUT A PIN IS STOLEN
Every time I find a stolen pin it’s because I’m digging into Pinterest and repinning my own stuff. They appear as your own content under related pins.
As I was pinning my own pins, related pins popped up that Pinterest deemed highly relevant. Well, apparently they deem these stolen pins to be highly relevant. I’d be laughing if I wasn’t so furious!!
There are 2 main ways to tell instantly if a pin is stolen at a glance, before you even go to their website.
1) The blog post title won’t match
(unless they’re just a genius and thought to make theirs match, which I’ve never seen).
2) When you hover over the image, the URL that pops up won’t be yours.
Then of course, you can click through to verify the pin doesn’t lead to your website.
HOW TO REPORT HIJACKED PINS
If you want Pinterest to take action on your behalf, you must report stolen pins through the Pinterest DCMA reporting process.
Here is the link to do that >> Submit a Copyright Complaint on Pinterest
You can either fill out their online form OR send them an email using the instructions at this link.
Heads up – sometimes the form is really glitchy. The form wasn’t working for me plus I found so many this time, that I just sent an email instead.
If you send an email, make sure to follow all the instructions so they will be able to clearly see that you are indeed the copyright owner of the stolen image(s) so they will take appropriate action. I always hear back from my complaints, but sometimes it takes a couple weeks.
A WORD OF CAUTION
When you fill out the complaint form, DO NOT check the button that says “Remove All.” I believe by doing this, Pinterest will delete all instances of this image, including your own. Which we do not want!
Also, if you do STRIKE, and also click REMOVE ALL, this will result in strikes to your account as well (learned this the hard way).
We simply want them to remove the scammer’s pin. This is what “Remove All” looks like on the form:
I’ve thought long and hard on this, but I can’t see how deleting all instances of the pin would be in your best interest. Because even if that person has lots of repins, you ALSO have lots of repins and would be potentially deleting some hot pins of your own. I find that when someone steals one pin, they often have many of my pins redirected to their site, so the reporting feature is more of a warning than anything else.
UPDATE 3/12/18: I sometimes remove all when I’m seeing many instances of that same pin outranking my own. I wouldn’t do this on my very best pins, because I don’t want to lose the virality of my very old pins, but on newer/less popular pins I figure I can get everything taken down then start over.
It’s a dilemma for sure. What you decide to do is cool. Just try not to shoot yourself in the foot with the “remove all” option.
FIGHT BACK & USE WATERMARKS!
These scammers are basically stealing your traffic. It sucks, but it’s an unfortunate result of putting yourself out there. People steal. I try not to let it bother me, but man it hurts to see all your hard work going to benefit someone who just thinks it’s ok to steal your work! ☹
Whatever you do, make sure you’re making your content difficult to steal without consequence. If you catch someone doing this to you, you’ll need to prove it’s yours.
The way I do this is:
1) Make sure the images actually appear on my blog (i.e. you can see them when you go to the blog post) so I can simply link to the original source (one reason not to hide your pins) and
2) Make sure my watermark appears on my images. When at all possible, I put my watermark in a place that’s not easily cropped out. I have had one
scammer actually download my image, overlay a new title over mine, and portray it as his own.
Watermarks are harder to crop out when they are within the edges of the photo or inside of it. Basically, if someone can simply cut out a square or rectangle portion of your image and leave the watermark out of it, then it’s too easy to get rid of. I usually place my watermarks on top of something in the image or inside of a regular square cropping area. Like so:
See how you can’t simply do a symmetrical crop and take the pig + the text at once without my logo? That’s what I mean.
Hopefully your pins aren’t being stolen, but if you do find one, now you know how to figure it out quickly and report the theft! 😊
~ Lena
HOW TO FURTHER PROTECT YOURSELF
In a world where others can simply steal your hard work or your account could be marked as spam, it’s important to take steps to make sure your blog traffic and income is secure.
Pinterest is constantly making updates, and it really messes with my pins. They do things like accidentally strip your images of descriptions and stop showing your meta description on certain pins but not others.
I don’t like leaving my traffic to chance, so when this type of wonky stuff happens, I fall back on my trusty Pinterest tracking spreadsheet. It’s where I keep track of all my meta descriptions, Pin descriptions, and pin URLs so if anything ever happens, I have it all in one place to make a quick fix.
I’m a backup NUT. It’s a habit from my accounting days. It’s so important to make sure you have a copy of EVERYTHING IMPORTANT in your business just in case something goes wrong. In a world where anything can be deleted in a split second (or a crazy Pinterest employee could mark you as spam and shut down your account!). Ummmm no thank you. I will keep my information on file just in case.
If you want to be able to have a handle on your pins and overall Pinterest strategy at all times, I would love for you to have an exact copy of my Pinterest tracking template complete with pre-populated examples AND a training video to show you how to use it. For the cost of about one reasonably priced dinner, it’s a file that could literally save your business if something goes wrong with your Pinterest account.
In all honesty, this spreadsheet is the whole tracking system for my entire blog because it’s the one file where I can reference everything I’ve ever written.
Do you need more blog traffic?
Download this FREE GUIDE on my learning site, Adventures in Blogging >> CLICK HERE TO GET THE GUIDE
Just look for the “FREE TRIAL” button on that page. (It’s the free portion of my flagship guide, Traffic Transformation, the story of how I grew my blog to 400,000 monthly page views).
RELATED RESOURCES
- Simple Ebook Creation Guide
- Pinterest Tracking Template w/ Training Video
- Blog Income Boost
- How to Successfully Organize a Blog with Multiple Topics
Louise Myers says
I’m pretty sure in my many instances of reporting stolen pins, I’ve checked “remove all” without bad effects. But, I’m honestly not positive and wouldn’t recommend it… who knows what that really means? (Though I think it only means pins with the same Pin URL).
Thanks for sharing these tips to fight content thieves!!!
Lena Gott says
That’s the thing – the wording makes it seem like it will delete all instances of that image. It doesn’t elaborate, so I’m not taking any chances! 🙂
Tamara @Empowered Single Moms says
Thank-you so very much for the helpful information. I will definitely change where I put my watermark whenever possible. In the past I have been putting it in the lower corner and yes it would be easy to crop off. Even though I read about people’s pins getting stolen I had not thought of moving the watermark.
Lena Gott says
It definitely helps when you have to report one as stolen! SO easy to prove. 🙂
Katie says
Thank you for this helpful post! Honestly, I wasn’t even aware that people would do such a thing! I guess it figures, but it was nice living in Pinterest-copyright-ignorance bliss!
I wanted to offer my own tip though. It would honestly take me a solid 45 seconds to download the pin example you have in this article, lay a white square over top of your logo, and repin it watermark free. Image manipulation involves so much more than just cropping, and it doesn’t even take an advanced program like Photoshop to do it.
I would recommend having a simple text version of your logo that you can lay across the image somewhere with low opacity so it blends into the background. Or, in your example here, adding a slight gradient to the background would make it a little more annoying to remove the logo, since it would be obvious if I just plopped a plain white square over a gray gradient. Basically, find a way to incorporate your watermark into the image itself, so that cropping or covering will affect another aspect of the pin.
Just my thoughts! Thanks again for raising my awareness with this post!
Lena Gott says
that’s a great tip, Katie! I am very particular about my pins so not sure I would do the faded out logo look but it would be very effective!
Katy Sindy says
I wouldn’t put a logo white on white – it’s too easy to brush it over and put another one on top. A .png logo (with a transparent background) over the pig would be much more difficult to remove. Btw, I have your traffic transformation and love it!
Lena Gott says
I’m so glad! I didn’t realize that. Well, at a certain point I think they just “got me” lol
My circle watermark is a PNG file though – you just can’t usually tell it’s transparent because I overlay it on white. Is that what you mean you wouldn’t do?
Katie Scott says
I agree, transparency is a lot harder to cover up, but only if there’s something that can’t be duplicated UNDER that transparency. A white box takes 5 seconds to make a slap over a logo. Think about thr effectiveness of white out on plain white paper versus lined notebook paper.
The transparency of a .png file is useless when it’s placed on a white background. Like Katy said, it’s be a lot harder to cover up a logo on top of an image, like the pig. There are tons of ways to incorporate a watermark in an aesthetically pleasing way. The idea is to overlap it with another design element so it’s not as easy to cover up.
Lena Gott says
Good point!
IRISH PACK says
this is in regards to stealing pins: i am not sure if i am guilty or not….when i see something that i like or is pertinent to my crafting, i click on the little red pinterest logo and pin it to the appropriate board so i can get to it later when i have more time.
is it possible that i am guilty of this? i have gotten notification from pinterest that some of my pins had been removed, but they say that it is no fault of mine.
i would appreciate it if you can clarify this for me….thanks bunches!
Lena Gott says
Good question! No – that is not stealing pins. That’s just the act of repinning, which is the purpose of Pinterest. Stealing is when you repin someone’s pin and THEN REDIRECT it to your site by changing the destination URL. It’s an intentional traffic-stealing act!
When Pinterest tells you one of your pins has been removed, it’s possible that it got caught up in someone else’s reporting and they clicked the option to remove all instances of that image, which would include any of their pins that you repinned. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. Hope that helps! I think you’re good! 🙂
Caroline Vencil says
Thank you for this! I’ve read many incidents about this and it is very scary. I hope this NEVER happens to me but thanks to you, in case it happens, I know what to do.
Gemma | Seasidesundays says
Thank you for this post, Lena. Ironically enough, I just got alerted by a Pinterest user that the pin for my review of Traffic Transformations has been hijacked by an image site. I immediately came here to read what to do! thank you!
Lena Gott says
Man! Bummed to hear that but glad this helps! Let’s get those scammers! 🙂
Ryan K. says
I think this post is a bit misguided and could actually mislead some. The act of repinning is what generates traffic back to the source website. There is a ton of content on the internet from websites and social media that is not being circulated or has never really seen the light of day. I personally track down a lot of this content and blog about it and show my followers other great social media accounts on Pinterest, Instagram and elsewhere that they might be interested in following. Doing this enables me to shine a spotlight on someone that may not have a huge following yet but is talented. In most instances it results in a tremendous boost for the person I am blogging about. I have personally seen people from Instagram that I blog about successfully migrate over to Pinterest and have started seeing added success. And since I am pinning from my website(confirmed in Pinterest) the pin circulates to a much wider audience and simultaneously brings up related pins from that person’s account and suddenly that account starts to get traction. There is a big difference between ‘stealing’ and ‘promoting’. If someone is just grabbing the image and not using any source URL in the blog post then that makes it a useless post. If someone is using the image to do something positive like shine the spotlight on you, maybe you should stop and think before putting that person’s account in Jepardy. My fashion blog posts(outfit roundups) became the standard bearer format in Pinterest.. Everyone in the fashion blog niche does ‘Trending Outfits” posts now. I may make a pin go viral and get 100k repins that would have otherwise never seen the light of day. That blogger gets a huge boost. That is just one example. Food for thought.
Lena Gott says
Hi Ryan – I see what you’re saying. What you’re describing is a permission based relationship where bloggers have given you permission to use their images on your blog and/or they are happy that you have done so because you’re sending them a lot of traffic. In my post, I am talking about instances where someone took my image(s) without permission, uploaded them to Pinterest, and entered their own blog as the source URL. EVEN IF they linked to my blog in their post, this is flat out stealing and NOT okay in my book. (FYI – the scammers I’m talking about never link back, just straight up steal).
I don’t believe this is misleading to call those people out. I would never report a blogger who simply made a mistake or *thought* they could use my images – I would simply reach out to them. The pinners I’m speaking on in this post are ones whose entire accounts are practically 100% stolen pins. When you find them, it’s obvious. You will see all your friends’ pins on their account with the trail leading back to the scam blog. These actions directly steal traffic from the original bloggers. It would be the equivalent of someone taking your tv cable line and attaching it to their house so they can steal your service. What belonged to them is now redirected to you. Hope this helps.
Sharon Collins says
Thank you Lena for addressing this stolen pin problem. I just started using pinterest for my business in Nov. 2017. I found you through a search on this subject as I just discovered this happened to me. They actually downloaded by image, added a red boarder bar on top and bottom. Since I had my business name with the © on the very bottom of my product, it is still showing, Then, obviously uploaded it and input their url which of course permanently attaches my altered image to their website to drive traffic to them through my image. Shocking, but not surprised. I am going to report them to pinterest, but just have to decide which route to take with the ‘report all’ and ‘strike’. Thanks again.
Lena Gott says
You’re very welcome, Sharon! So so frustrating!! :/
Frances Vidakovic says
So glad I found this post! I identified my first stolen pin today (at least that I’m aware of) after a stranger reached out to me via email to let me know my pin had been hijacked. She found me because the stolen pin actually still had my URL on it but she noticed it was sending her to a completely different website. So the pin thief was not only devious but a bit stupid too. Tough reminder for me that even with a URL on it a pin can still be stolen and it isn’t always obvious without clicking through either.
Lena Gott says
grrrr so annoying! Good thing she emailed you.
Sam says
Hi Lena,
Great article! I just came across it because I have someone redirecting a bunch of my pins too. Just to clarify, if I hit STRIKE but not remove all, will that still negatively affect me and my account?
Thanks!
Lena Gott says
Correct – if you strike AND remove all, you could end up striking yourself.
Kathryn says
Hi Lena,
I have a few pins that are personal images that I have uploaded to my own pinterest board. I have gotten several re-pins to my original post, however, I did a subject search through pinterest and found that another girl downloaded and re-pinned my image and labeled it with the same caption. Do I need to embed my pin so that no one can steal my image? I don’t have a personal blog to link the image to either.
Lena Gott says
There’s nothing you can do to prevent someone from stealing your pins. All you can do is report the ones you find.
Troy Sawyer says
Yes, definitely DO NOT check the “remove all” box. I did this once and not only were the stolen pins removed but all of MY pins were also removed! Not good. Only check the “strike” box. I’ve contacted pinterest multiple times asking them to try and sort this pin stealing problem out but they seem uninterested. Pin stealing is now rampant and sucks. We work hard to get our pins up and they are OURS, not spammers! Really gets on my goat when people steal my pins. I also see it so much with other accounts as well. I report these pins as well. I hate people stealing my pins so I know other legitimate pinners feel the same, so I try and help them out also.
Lena Gott says
I feel ya’ Troy!!
Tina says
Hi all,
Lena, thank you for the informative post. I truly feel everyone’s pain….
I have several blogs that I use Pinterest to drive traffic to, and stolen pins are my biggest headache.
It seems whenever I report stolen pins, it backfires and I get my account suspended or board deleted for “spammy” activities. I’m guessing when I report spammers, they strike back and get my pins, boards, accounts in trouble.
If I don’t report pins with fear of getting my account suspended, I see my traffic slowly declines despite my everyday efforts to pin new pins and stay active.
I feel like I’m losing the battle with spammers on Pinterest and not sure what to do to stay clear of this problem.
I’m just curious has anyone here has similar experiences? and I want to see if anyone knows better (safer) way of reporting stolen pins.
Thank you for all your help.
Lena Gott says
Hi Tina – I have never had the issue of having my account marked as spam after reporting spammers, and I report a LOT of spam. I wonder if these are two separate issues? Are you perhaps overpinning? I know that’s a fast way to get banned.
Amy says
I just found a stolen pin! Made me so mad when I saw that a scammy website was trying to take credit for this blogger’s hard work. It led to a site that you could tell was a big scam. I wish I could have reported the pin myself but the only thing I could do was to tell the blogger! I recognized her PIN right off the bat.. Thanks for the blogging about this!! We gotta stick together and fight back. Blogging takes a lot of time & effort.
Lena Gott says
Tell me about it! So glad this helps!