Can you prove someone is using your Photo?

[fashionfan]

Hi,

I am newer to the forum and thank everyone in advance for any help. I am wondering if there is anyway to prove a photo of mine is being used by someone else on Ebay? I don't care about the tracking information. I am just curious if there is anyway to do that if the photo has had some editing done to it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[empirestate]

It's eBay every1 copies every1. If you don't want to attract attention, don't go reporting sum1.

[fashionfan]

No I don't want to report anyone. Someone sent me an email saying they are going to report a woman who is using my photos and her photos. I was just curious if that can even be proven? I honestly don't care she can use my photos all she wants, she bought the items off me to flip.

I am just really wondering if the woman who is all fired up can even do anything about it. Thanks for your help.

[jeffweico]

Well, those things can go either way, but it seems unlikely if she edited the photo. It would be very difficult, because the person reporting will probably have to either prove or make eBay strongly believe it was her photo and if it has been edited, that can get difficult, unless the editing was very minimal.

If you want to protect your photos, the best thing you can do is to make sure you put your information into the EXIF of the photo. If your information is in the EXIF, that will go a long way to convincing eBay that the photo is yours.

Back in the day when photos were hosted on our own servers, I had a guy who stole my entire listing, just changing my name and information to his. I emailed him and politely asked him to stop. He sent me a nasty response saying there was nothing I could do to him and that I had better get used to being his BIT**!

So, I copied all of the photos on my server to slightly new names and edited my listing so that my listings was requesting the photos from the new names.

Then, I went online and found the most disgusting porn pictures that I could. And I found some DOOZIES! Not just naked people, the most offensive and disgusting porn you can imagine.

Then, I renamed the pictures to the original filenames that were on my original listing and uploaded them to my server.

So, his listing is now chock-full of porn photos. I had a friend of mine report him to eBay claiming his kids saw it and guess what? Within 5 minutes he was "No Longer a Registered User"

I know that more than a few people are thinking that "Jeff would never do that!" but even I have my limits...

[GreenBean]

The Force is strong with jeffweico!

[fashionfan]

Thanks Jeff. I honestly don't sweat people who buy my items and resell them. If she is too lazy to use my photos it is no big deal. But this other woman is on the war path so it made me curious. I appreciate you explaining it to me So if you don't add that extension you mentioned there is not way to prove it. Do you think most people do use the extension to protect their photos? I have been reading up metatags like this and it seems time consuming.