The dirty underbelly of beauty blogging- Are you a victim of image and content theft?

Ah How I hate negativity on the blogosphere,after all beauty blogging is my favorite hobby & Beauty blogosphere is my place to catch up with like minded makeup enthusiasts, find great friends, to be creative and learn so much from fellow bloggers.

In my last 1.5 years of blogging I have always tried to steer clear of the negativity ,but after the recent chain of events I decided its very important to discuss a very serious issue-A risk all of us beauty bloggers face- Of image and content theft and also something more sinister- Identity theft.

I recently received a comment from Emm at Circular Insanity about a fake eye makeup entry she has received for her L'or Electrifying Eye Makeup contest, from a contestant-called Bidisha Banerjee.

Emm mentioned she received pictures of my 'Midweek Madness' Eye makeup look from Bidisha. I was totally stunned when I read this & I requested Emm to forward me the mail and content sent in by Bidhisha.

To my utter horror this Girl had copied my pictures & watermarked them and copied my entire post content and mailed to Emm as her contest entry!!!

Emm was kind enough to forward me the mail from Bidisha and the link to her post & her FB profile.

Here are the snapshots of the blog post hosted by Bidisha- 

She casually lifted eye makeup looks from 3 different bloggers and water marked it and then tried to enter a contest earn financial rewards from a 4th blogger. Obviously zero respect for the time, money,energy & effort put in by these 4 people.

It didn't strike her that all the three eye makeup looks belonged to 3 different people- had different ethnicity (as duly noted by Emm- one was caucasian, second oriental and third Indian!) different eye shapes and color and complexion.She tried to pass all three looks as hers!!  

After I mailed her regarding the legal repercussions of her little stunt, she was forced to take down the link to her fraud post.

http://contest-entry-for-circular-insanity.blogspot.in/2012/05/my-contest-entry-for-circular-insanity.html

Meet our young copycat blogger

Her explanation for the whole deal-

How much guts does it take to own up & say I'm sorry I made a mistake? Rather than dishing out this nonsense story about here friend sending her the images which she innocently sent as her own entry?!

This issue is very close to my heart as I feel very strongly about privacy issues.Its the audacity coupled with ample idiocy of a person who didn't think for a moment before stealing pics of my face & passing it off as hers.

Credibility Gap-Many of us read reviews online and buy products basis the recommendation of bloggers- this obviously raises very serious concerns about the authenticity of reviews being put up by many newbies who probably have never used or even seen the products they are writing about.

My second & more important concern is about identity theft, I have heard horror stories of fellow bloggers who have had their pictures being misused by some fakers to create false identities on FB.

Its incredibly easily for any random stranger to get all details about your life and have a field day with your data.Considering privacy on the web is a mere illusion, one needs to be extra careful about putting up their pictures (especially full face pics) on the web.

What Can you do to stop it?

1. Contrary to popular belief watermarking your images won't prevent theft, anybody with elementary Photoshopping skills can still lift your photos.So be cautious about which images you post on the net.

However as a basic deterrent it is advisable to watermark your images,if you don't want to spoil the look of your images you can try digital watermarking, it is invisible to naked eye but ,makes it very easy to trace if someone has copied your images.I had not been watermarking my images and I'm going to start doing it now.

2.Put up a Copyright notice on your blog- I'm posting this ASAP on my own blog.

3.Search chunks of your content on Google & other search enginesto identify if someone has copied your content.

4.Report the copycats- If you spot plagiarized content then do report it.

5.Trust reviews only from credible sources.

My message to all the people who obviously have no appreciation of the creative process, patience,practice,photography skills, writing and editing & extreme hard work and burning the midnight oil it takes a Beauty Blogger  to create original content.

Cut -copy- paste, does not a blog make.

Be original and write something close to your heart & something you believe in,not just to win a contest or some freebies, but because you love blogging.

If you feel strongly about this issue, please share this post around with your friends.

Take care Girls, stay safe !