BEWARE of What You SHARE on FACEBOOK! Quilt Images for Scam Sites.

We are all served ads on Facebook that have quilts in them.  I have had friends on Facebook share beautiful quilts from ads they are shown.  Several of these are part of a NEW SCAM to spread their advertisement and get unsuspecting customers to place orders for these “blankets”.  But these sites take your money and send you nothing.

Here’s what they look like:

So the thing is that some of these images are of a real person’s quilt!  The one in the featured image and the top image in this set are photoshopped onto a background.  The quilt or blanket that was originally there you can see the edge turned upwards on the bottom right and it’s exactly the same.  This is what their website looks like:

There’s pages and pages of stolen quilt images or other artwork (like the dragonflies) photoshopped onto a blank “quilt” looking background.  Even the stitching is digitally added.  Almost all of the artists who have discovered their quilt image reproduced here had no idea it’s been done.  We’ll cover what to do if you are a designer in a minute.  These listings are way below what any real quilter would charge for their work, and people who have ordered (as discovered from the comments on the images) have said that they just take the money and do not send anything.  Researching the sites above they are based overseas in Asia.

When you see these ads, what can you do?  Well, let’s start with WHY you are seeing them. Facebook advertisers (including myself) use your stated interests to serve you ads.  When I do an ad on Facebook, I usually target people who like quilting.  So you can click on the little “…” in the upper right. Then Click on “Why am I seeing this ad?”

The reason I was seeing this ad is because I like the show Outlander!  Crazy, right?

Literally every day you are served with ads for products on Facebook and elsewhere that could be for products that are not real.  It’s hard now to understand what’s a real product (like mine) and what’s a fake one!  After all, the scammers spend their money to serve up that ad, and many of them are shared without you knowing that that artwork doesn’t belong to them.

So, here’s some guidelines:

1. If the artist is NOT CREDITED in the text of the Facebook post, DO NOT SHARE IT.  Would you like your work to be spread around the internet without credit?  No?  Then don’t do it to others!

2. If it looks Photoshopped, DO NOT SHARE IT.  Just don’t be that guy or girl who spreads obviously stolen work around.

3. REPORT the ad to Facebook.  Here’s how you do that.

Choose “It’s Misleading or a Scam”.  Facebook will tell you thanks for reporting it.   A few days later, you may get a rather frustrating message that says “We’ve review the ad, and it is not against our ad policies.” That’s a sad fact, that yes, this image is not against ad policies, therefore Facebook doesn’t know that these are stolen images or a scam website.  But don’t worry, that’s because there’s only one or two of us reporting them.  If we ALL report these scam sites, then they will move on to offering something else rather than stealing our beloved quilt images.  There’s power in numbers, so if it’s a scam site, report that ad to Facebook.

Now, if you are a quilt artist who finds your work copied onto one of these sites, you have a few methods you can do to have your image and their site taken down.   You need to be the original copyright owner of the image.  You will be serving them a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) Takedown notice.  The DCMA protects your copyright.  I found this website HERE to be a valuable resource in giving you the basics on what you need to do.  Don’t fret.

These guys usually crumble and start a brand new site with other images instead.  We all have to be on our guard for scams out there, but PLEASE take care in what you share!

Note: All of these images were reported to Facebook already.  If these are your quilts, I have tried to locate you to ask your permission, if you’d like them taken down, please notify me.