Stolen pins, part 2 - the Aftermath
First of all, WA, I would like to thank everyone who reached out to me, your support made this horrible experience somehow bearable.
Now, many updates on this subject that looks far from over!
Firstly, Pinterest are faster than expected. Thank God for that.
They reacted and took down the first pin that I reported stolen in a matter of hours. Being the control freak that I am, I checked again just to see with my own eyes. Yes, friends, the duplicate is gone and just my original work in now on the platform.
Victory!!!
Secondly, for your best interest - if you ever find yourself in the same situation, please, contact me first. There is a specific way to report a stolen pin and I'll walk you thtough the process. One step in the wrong direction and all of the pins will me removed, including your original work. So, do keep this in mind!
Above all, you won't believe what else I managed to discover since my first post on this topic!
One of the sites that stole my pins went that far to steal the logo of one of the biggest blogging platforms currently. So, what was the right course of action in here considering it's not my work?
Well, I don't know if it was the best thing to do, but this is what I did:
I did contact that blogging platform and let them now that such an important part of their trademark is being used unethically.
In other words, I feel confident that my actions will help to take that "business" down once and for all.
Did I went too far? Honestly, I don't think so.
You get what you're putting out there. Moreover, I would like to believe that if a fellow blogger notices the same thing happening to me, they would bother and take the time to let me know.
Isn't that what the blogging community is supposed to be about?
More news:
Today I found more pins being stolen. Well, I went after tham again and I won't stop until I manage to shut down all their accounts. Not just because they are hurting my business.
But mostly because I'll do everything in my power to stop them doing to somebody else as well.
In the end of the day, it's a horrible feeling watching all your hard work being taken advantage of. I lost the better part of the day going after "businesses" that have no basic moral and integrity. Time, that could be better spent at my own business instead of dealing with something that I shouldn't have to deal in the first place.
Well, it is what it is. Unforunately, it's a part of the online world.
When I told my Mom about what's going on, do you know what she told me?
"You must be doing something right. It looks like your business is taking off if people feel the need to steal from you."
When you look at it that way, she is probably right. Still, that doesn't make it OK.
I, for once, don't see myself leaving this alone any time soon. It takes a minute to report a stolen pin and tons of work to get a pin to go viral and to bring tons of traffic.
So, am I supposed to just sit and watch BS people using my work and probably the work of hundreds of others content creators for their benefit?
Not gonna happen!
Recent Comments
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Thank you once again for telling us about this issue. It is setting the precedence for people to report this kind of thing. I haven't had the chance to look at my account yet but I am going to take a look at it tomorrow and check my boards out.
I will keep you posted and take it from there. Thank you for the information.
Mary
Please, do keep me posted.
It's working when you act on it.
I was just contacted from Pinterest and they remove all the stolen stuff.
If the BS accounts who did that continue to do so, Pinterest will suspend their accounts for good.
Again, if you find that pins of yours have been stolen, contact me first before reporting them.
I'll walk you through how to do it so Pinterest won't remove your original work along with the stolen one.
Hopefully, you'll be all good!
It has been so long since I checked on account that I can't tell if anything has been stolen or not but I will keep a closer eye on my account now since this has become an issue with stolen pins.
Thank you again for bringing this to our attention it is great to know that someone is on top of this issue and we can bring down those that steal pins from us.
Mary
You are welcome.
All of my stolen pins have been removed already.
At least the ones I managed to find so far.
To be continued!
Thanks for bringing this unfortunate reality to our attention! I am sorry to hear you were victimized in this fashion. You were right to report them and try to get them banned/blocked and have your pins reclaimed. Your work belongs to you and should be able to designate who can share it and certainly you retain the ownership and credit. I agree with your mom that your work must have value for someone else to try and usurp it!
Keep up the great work and keep reporting those with no integrity who try to steal other people's work. Also glad to know Pinterest is on top of these activities too.
Thank you very much.
Since it happened, I'm in contact with Pinterest constantly and the platform has been awesome so far.
As for 30 minutes ago, all of the pins I reported have been removed already so this is good.
Too many people don't bother to report pins unless is from their most viral ones and that's just plain wrong.
It turns out that every Pinterest account that has been reported enough time eventually gets shut down completely, so we should all work together against those spammers and stop them until they steal from more and more content creators.
Marsha here. My goodness! There are just too many people online who have nothing better to do but to steal from those of us who are working hard to build our businesses. I have a blog that I started nearly a year ago. It's doing okay, but nothing special. (I'll be moving it over here when the hosting comes due again) Anyway, a couple of months ago some idiot managed to get into my dashboard and set himself up as an administrator! To say that I hit the ceiling when I saw it, is an understatement. I had to contact Blue Host and give them all the information I had. I'm not sure what they did, but they got his information off my site and blocked him. Come to find out, I'm not the only one he's done this to.
Anyway, I'm glad Pinterest took care of the thief and did it quickly. You go! Keep up the great work and keep us informed.
Hey, Marsha, thanks for reaching out.
It's a tough pill to swallow, isn't? Especially when it happens for the very first time.
But, as business owners, we have no choice but to deal with it.
Glad to hear that you managed to handle such an awful experience.
And yeah, I won't stop until I take them down completely.
To steal someone else's intellectual property is unacceptable to be.
So far, Pinterest has been very collaborative and doing its best to take care of the problem.
One stolen pin down, 4 more to go...And those are just the ones that I found up until now.
Best of luck and future success!
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Very useful information - bookmarked!
Thanks a lot for sharing!
Wish you great success!
Bob