Photographers and artists love to share their work on social media platforms to showcase their creativity. E-commerce store owners also post photos of their products on their websites and social media platforms to promote their products. That’s how they enhance their followers, win people’s trust, generate leads, and make money through them.
However, some copycats and scammers often steal their photos and share them on their profiles. Unfortunately, it has become quite common these days. Content stealers sometimes earn more appreciation and money than original creators. This deceptive technique influences people’s minds and gains their trust. Once ordinary netizens fall into their trap, they scam them and run away.
Therefore, before you buy any product from a new online store or purchase an artwork, check whether it’s original or stolen. Otherwise, you could get scammed. Need to know how to check if a photo is stolen? Then, this article is for you.
But before learning to authenticate photos, let’s understand why it’s essential!
Why is it Important to Check if a Photo is Stolen?
Prevent Scams
Generally, scammers don’t use their data to scam people. If they do so, they may get caught. Therefore, they always rely on others’ data and identities. They use the original brands’ or creators’ names to earn people’s trust and then scam them.
Therefore, before purchasing from a random online store, ensure the photos you have just watched are original and not stolen. If the images are stolen, don’t trust the person or organization sharing them and claiming authority.
Protect Your Reputation
Aside from scammers, you may also unintentionally use others’ creative and copyright-protected work. For instance, people often download photos and other material from online platforms and share them on their websites or social media profiles. Before posting anything online, check if the photo is authentic and original.
Checking it may help you protect your reputation and credibility. You may also be labeled a content stealer or copycat if you don’t.
Avoid Legal Issues
Posting any other person’s photos online may also lead a person to a legal battle. Make sure to be cautious before you post anything online. That’s how you can easily protect your reputation and avoid unwanted situations. No matter whether you do it intentionally or unintentionally, you may have to face severe repercussions for that.
How to Check if a Photo is Stolen?
Search by Image
No matter what type of photo it is, if you want to check its authenticity, search for that image on a reliable photo finder tool. You will be able to analyze who owns that particular photo. Reverse image engines allow people to search by images.
Yes, apart from text, we can now search for anything using digital images as input queries, and the credit goes to free reverse image search tools.
When you search by image, the photo search tools analyze all the image elements and search for the same or similar photos online. Within moments, they show links to all the web pages where such images are uploaded online.
Exploring those links and the provided details will help you quickly analyze who created, designed, or captured that photo.
Check License
Checking a photo’s license can also help you verify the photo and all its legal rights. A copyright license may answer many questions, including:
- Who owns the photo?
- What particular permissions are granted by the creator?
- Who can use that photo, and under what conditions?
A license can help you know everything about a photo. So, analyzing the license can help you prevent scams. Also, if you are a website owner, checking the license before copying or downloading a photo can help you understand whether you can use that photo.
Look for Watermark
A watermark is a visible logo, pattern, or text added to digital photos and videos. Digital content creators and photographers sometimes don’t share their pictures without watermarking. They add watermarks to their photos to prevent them from copycats. Also, they do it to attract more and more people to their social media profiles or websites.
This trick is quite helpful for them. Moreover, it helps ordinary netizens quickly analyze whether the photo is stolen. Analyze the watermark, if there is any. That’s how you can quickly determine the original creator.
Conclusion
Many scammers use others’ photos to scam people. Unfortunately, most people don’t check images’ authenticity or do not know how to do so, so they get scammed quite easily.
However, knowing who owns a photo is relatively easy. Use the simple strategies mentioned here to realize everything about the pictures quickly.