Client News

Recently I (and many of you) have received emails that start like this...

Subject: New inquiry from your website -- yourdomain.com DMCA Copyright Infringement Noti

Hello there!

My name is Angela.

Your website or a website that your company hosts is infringing on a copyright protected images owned by myself.

Take a look at this doc with the hyperlinks to my images you utilized at yourdomain.com and my previous publication to find the evidence of my copyrights.

Download it now and check this out for yourself:

Then there is a link to "https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/...."

Do not click this link, it will download a virus to your computer. This is the whole point of this email, to get you to click on this link.

Read more about this scam here.

The real genius of this scam is that there can be legitimate cases of image copyright infringement on websites. Over the years it has happened to several of my clients. You may use an image on your site that you got from a google image search or copied from another website. You have to be very careful when doing this, because most images you will find on the internet have been created by someone and are their copyrighted property. Always ask me before adding images to your site that you did not create yourself. If you receive an email claiming image copyright infringement, forward it to me and we will evaluate it. Usually the sender will be satisfied if you just remove the copyrighted images from your website, and you won't have to pay them any penalty.

If I am working on your site and we need certain images, I will buy them from stock photo sellers, and will be licensed to use them.