Disgusting Stories of Stolen Digital PHOTOS
1. The Texas child who was “digitally kidnapped” by a man posing as her father
A man in New York has been indicted with “digital kidnapping.” He downloaded images of a Texas woman’s daughter and posted them to his Facebook page, claiming he was father of the child.
“It was my daughter! All over his page,” Danica Patterson (the real mother) claims. “It’s scary. That’s the only thing I can really say—it’s scary.”
The man then posted comments on the photographs to try and trick others into thinking the 4-year-old child was his own. “Ya’ll can’t say ma daughter not ma twin,” read one post. Another said, “Ma daughter gunna break y’all sons hearts.”
Patterson learned about it after someone discovered the pictures and tipped her off by sending her screenshots. A social media attorney, John Browning, dubbed it as a case of “digital kidnapping”. He then added that while it is “creepy,” it’s not “directly illegal.”
2. The family who was horrified to find their daughter’s photo on a prenatal screening ad
A mother was outraged after seeing her daughter’s image on an ad for genetic testing. Someone stole her image and then placed it on the ad.
A Canadian mom Christie Hoos, whose daughter Becca has Down Syndrome, often blogs about her family. But it’s not often that she posts photos of her four kids online. But as she wrote in a recent blog post, “Once was all it took.”
In June 2015, Hoos came to know through one of her readers that a picture of Becca, which the reader recognized from the blog, was being used in a giant advertisement in Spain. The poster, which hung on the side of a building, was promoting a genetic test for Down Syndrome by Genoma, a Swiss-based biomedical company. “My daughter has been made the poster child for a prenatal testing kit called Tranquility as if she were a cautionary tale. Don’t let this happen to you.”
The image, which Hoos describes as “a beautiful shot of her face—one of my [favorites],” was at first stolen by a free stock photo website. It was later distributed to Genoma for their ad. Neither Hoos nor Genoma has named the stock image site. The photo has since been removed from Genoma’s website.
3. The pregnant woman whose photo was stolen by a Facebook creep to lure viewers to a ‘PREGGOPHILA’ fetish site
A mother-of-two says she felt nauseous when she discovered a “preggophile” Facebook creep had stolen a picture of her with a bulging, pregnant belly.
Megan Ireland, 24, who lives in Sydney, was shocked to find a mysterious vagrant was using her picture to solicit other women into posting their belly shots for a pregnancy fetish website.
The Australian Multiple Birth Association (AMBA) rang the alarm bells after discovering a woman called “Afina” was gathering images of pregnant women from mother’s group pages in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
After posting Ireland’s photo, “Afina” (obviously a fake profile) then invited other women to share photos of their engorged tummies. The association further added the photos were briskly uploaded to the fetish site, which features pregnant women in various states of undress.
Ireland came to know about it from a friend who remembered her distinctive belly, and sent her a screenshot. “I literally had never heard of this,” she said. “My stomach is clearly the one that stands out from the crowd.”
Ireland later added that she was angered that the photo was being used to lure other women.
4. The family Christmas photo that turned up in a Czech ad
Danielle Smith, 36, who lives in the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon, said she and her family posed for their Christmas card photo in 2008, and later she posted the photo on her blog and some social networking sites. It featured her, her husband Jeff, and their two children.
After some months, a college friend was driving through Prague when he spotted the family’s smiling faces in the window of a store specializing in European food. He shot a few pictures and sent them to a flabbergasted Smith. “It’s a life-size picture in a grocery store window in Prague—my Christmas card photo!” she said.
Mario Bertuccio, owner of the Grazie store in Prague, said the image was downloaded from the Internet. Details were sparse, but he said he thought it was computer-generated. When notified it was a real photo of a real family, he said he began taking steps to remove it.
5. The woman who wet her pants at a theme park and later found the image in a Facebook ad
A young girl who wet her pants at a horror theme park—which uses the slogan “piss your pants scary”—was stunned to discover the venue published an image of her crotch on social media.
Spookers theme park in Auckland used an image of the girl’s wet shorts as the top banner on their Facebook timeline, boasting that no less than five people wet their pants there every day. (It must be quite a theme park!)
The girl demanded Spookers remove the photo after friends recognized her clothing and teased her about the incident.
6. The woman whose selfie was stolen and printed on t-shirts without her consent
When you share a selfie online, you’re most likely just after a few likes or a comment about how fierce your new hairdo is. Melanie Armsden, 28, a hairdresser from Leeds, was stunned when she found her selfie was plastered on a load of t-shirts without her knowledge.
The garments were on sale at Shop Direct. Once they discovered the snafu, the company removed them promptly and disclosed a manufacturer in India had made them.
Since Armsden was the copyright owner, so she threatened to sue the company who’d reproduced the image without her consent. But the case was settled out of court.
7. The father who discovered Facebook photos of him and his seven-year-old daughter were used to scam $4,000 from an Austrian woman
In April 2015, a father discovered that Facebook pictures of him and his seven-year-old daughter were used to create a fake account and scam an Austrian woman out of $4,000.
Antonio Valente, from Dallas, Texas, first found out of the ruse when he got a message from Marianne Heinrich, who lives in Vienna. She told him that someone using the name “Johnson Michael Lynn” had created a fake Facebook profile using photos of him and his daughter before befriending her online.
After a few friendly conversations with Heinrich, the man told her he would love to marry her and move to Austria to be with her and his daughter. Then he told Heinrich he wanted money to pay taxes in England. She quickly wired him $4,000.
Later she realized she had been conned and used an image from his profile to search Google photos. She then discovered they had been stolen from Valente.
8. The artist who used other people’s Instagram photos in an exhibition without their permission and sold the prints for $100,000
The art community was left enraged after a controversial artist “stole” Instagram images and sold them at an exhibition—for upwards of $100,000 each.
65-year-old painter and photographer Richard Prince, blew up screenshots of images captured from his Instagram feed. He printed them on canvases for his New Portraits series, which features images of famous models, artists, and celebrities, plus racy pictures of unknown people.
Each of the image was first displayed at the Los Angeles-based Gagosian Gallery in 2014, then sold out at the Frieze New York art fair in May 2015. One image fetched $90,000.
One of the Instagram users whose photos were stolen fought back by selling the exact same prints for a trifling $90 each. Selena Mooney, the founder of SuicideGirls, a website that features pin-up images of alternative models, kicked off a price war with the 65-year-old artist. She shared a side-by-side comparison of Prince’s $90,000 images and her $90 copies, noting that both versions are inkjet on canvas and 67″x55″.
Just as Prince did, the SuicideGirls have added their own comment to the bottom of each print—each one reads: “True art.” They then donated the profits from any print sales to charity.
9. The woman whose photo was stolen and used for a sex ad on Craigslist
When Tammie Veach shared her selfie on Facebook, she never envisaged it would be stolen. But in May 2014, she found her photo was used for a sex ad on Craigslist.
“They posted me as wanting multiple sex partners,” Veach said. The ad also included her cell phone number. “I had over 100 voicemails.”
“There was everything from a husband and wife who wanted me as one of their partners to multiple men offering me a $1,000 to meet them,” she said. Tammie, a married mother, alleged that her number was lifted from her family’s bowfishing business. “It’s a hoax, I’ve been put on there as a joke.”
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