scam

Heads up, photographers (and content publishers): scammers are apparently now changing the copyright ownership data on Wikipedia photographs in order to trick people who use the photos legally.

A well-known photography scam is making the rounds again, attempting to prey on desperate photographers who have been out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you receive a suspicious request from a potential "client," followed by "overpayment" of your fee, don't fall for it!

Two months ago, popular photographer and digital artist John Wilhelm's Facebook was hacked. Below, he shares the step-by-step story of how the hack happened, and how the hacker used his very popular Facebook page to scam hundreds of his followers out of their hard-earned money.

If your Instagram feed has been filling up with text posts about a new "rule" that will soon allow Instagram to use your content in unprecedented and nefarious ways, don't sweat it: Instagram has confirmed that the viral meme is exactly as fake as it looks.

There is a persistent scam going around that is so pervasive that you might think everyone has heard about it and is immune to it. Yet, I often enough see this come up as a question in a Facebook group when a photographer is unsure if an inquiry is a scam. Most often they are. This is how these advance-fee scams work and how photographers are scammed.

Scammers have been known to pose as famous photographers in emails offering jobs that are actually 419 (AKA Nigerian Prince) scams. But some scammers are now taking things to the next level by posing as known photographers in real-time instant messenger chats.

Forget Nigerian princes: email scammers are now pretending to be famous photographers looking for collaborators. Photographer Michael Glenn just received an email from someone claiming to be the well-known American photographer Jill Greenberg.

Beware. There's a new scam on Instagram that preys on people who would like a free camera drone. I was messaged by a scam account, and here's how it works.

In November 2016, I was in a transitional part of my life (I still am) and was considering selling my Leica M2 and switching to a digital Ricoh GR. I listed the camera on several Facebook camera trading groups and the Australian/UK Craigslist alternative, Gumtree. Long story short, I was scammed while trying to sell it.

PetaPixel has written a number of times in the past about Nigerian 419 scammers targeting photographers and photography assistants. After spending time setting up business arrangements, the scammers will use shady tactics to try and steal your hard-earned money.

I'm a freelance photographer, and I recently got sick and tired of being contacted by these scammers. To get back at them, I started having ridiculous conversations with them to lead them on and piss them off. I also started publishing the exchanges on a new site called Messing with Scammers.

Photographers, beware: there may be scammers on your local Craigslist that target photography assistants. Fall into this trap, and you could soon find yourself separated from your own money.

This past weekend, we wrote about how one photographer received a counterfeit memory card from eBay and lost a number of important photos when the card got corrupted during the first use. Afterward, we had an interesting email exchange with the eBay seller that shed some new light on this story.

There is currently a scam targeting photographers nationwide. It begins with a threat of false negative reviews if a business owner doesn't pay a "reputation management fee". Whether the business responds or not, the scammers will post many negative reviews then offer to have them removed or pushed down the search results... For a fee, of course.

Scams targeting photographers are nothing new. There’s one that we’ve seen for a few years in which the “client” asks if they can send you a check for more than they owe you so you can pay some other vendor for them (they then bounce the check and you end up having paid the vendor scammer your money). Another one out there tries to sell you an interesting or desirable domain name. There are other more local ones (fake Craigslist ads or eBay sales for instance).

Dutch graphic design student Zilla van den Born recently conducted an interesting experiment on the power of phoney and misleading photos on social media. For five weeks, Zilla tricked her family and Facebook friends into thinking that she was on a long and exciting vacation through South East Asia. In reality, she never even set foot outside of her home city of Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to hear about fauxtographers stealing other photographers work and passing it off as their own. Heck, there’s an entire website dedicated to shaming the scam artists who do this. But despite the distinct possibility that you'll be caught and have your career destroyed if you do this, it continues to happen.

Case in point is a recent situation involving Lin and Jirsa Photography and the tale of how their images were stolen and used by an unnamed photographer to entice new wedding clients with work that wasn’t his own.

Last week, we and many others ran the story of a rather astounding collection of photographs that were supposedly discovered in a foxhole where the infamous Battle of the Bulge took place.

Allegedly found by U.S. Navy Captain Mark Anderson and accompanying historian Jean Muller, the story goes that the duo found then scanned the images in an old camera, presenting them to the world seventy years after they were captured and left behind by a soldier who had been KIA. But that, it seems, is not the truth.

Austin-based photographer Polly Chandler was recently the victim of an Internet sales scam that took advantage of distance and anonymity to create the perfect storm of events that led to her being out a few thousand dollars.

A popular iOS and Android app that promised to generate torrents of Instagram likes and followers for its users also swiped thousands of passwords for the service, and is now being called a massive scam.

Wedding photography can be a rough business. And although the photographers have plenty to worry about (i.e. irate ministers and getting your gear stolen), clients would do well to be careful too, lest they get duped by con artists like New Jersey's Michael De Rubeis.

This little story started after I’d bought a Ricoh GRD IV and GV-2 viewfinder. Due to some unforeseen financial issues, I realized I had to sell it. I didn’t think this would be a problem since I’d only used it around three or four times. So optimistically, I went about advertising on eBay, Gumtree and Craigslist. The next day I received an email via the Craigslist ad from ‘Pamela Richard’ asking for me to reply “asap”. This is where it all began.

Lifehacker featured a great tip today courtesy of Redditor lifedeathandtech that’ll help you …

If you're a photographer looking for a gig on Craigslist, be careful. As with virtually all the types of "help wanted" listings found on the site, requests for photography services are often used by scammers as a way of luring the naive. Scammers also regularly send out emails to photographers advertising their services.

The Onion’s Tech Trends has a hilarious satirical video warning of the “insidious” …