So, I will start out by saying that I have a decent following on twitter/reddit. When I started, about 3 years ago, I didn't watermark anything. My mistake.
I had tons of pics and videos out there, without watermarks.
Fast forward to today, I have a pretty decent following, and I use the same username across several platforms.
I get a message that someone is pretending to be me on kik. To make a long story short, I find out that they have verified, as me, on ManyVids and ExtraLunchMoney - I already had an account on ELM.
Not only that - they have made about $200 in sales.
I messaged both companies, ManyVids took immediate action. ELM, essentially said "this person verified with an ID, they are legit" and I sent them even more proof that no, no they aren't legit.
Both sites sent me the "verification pic" that was used to verify- it was a sign I used to verify on a public site a long time ago, that requires a specific hand sign. So not only was the sign OBVIOUSLY photoshopped (I'm no expert, and I could tell), but it also included me doing some weird ass specific hand sign thing.
Neither site will give me IP info, or anything further. But they both confirmed that my photo was the photo used in the ID submitted. So it was my photo, photoshopped onto an ID. I can't imagine how shotty this must've looked.
Anyways, both accounts have been suspended, and luckily enough for me, I managed to get both sites to forward the earnings to me since the moron who created the fake pages couldn't cash out without entering legal information.
But it got me to thinking, would it be that much more difficult for these sites to require two verification pics? All it takes is one fan sign style pic to fake as anyone?
Has anyone had experience with this? It just makes me worried, because if this type of oversight can happen with verification, how careful are they with other info? Do these sites really care about the legitimacy of their sellers? Or just the bottom line? I fully accept that I should've been more careful with my pics, and watermarked from the start, but it's still frustrating!
My only advice would be to watermark everything.
I had tons of pics and videos out there, without watermarks.
Fast forward to today, I have a pretty decent following, and I use the same username across several platforms.
I get a message that someone is pretending to be me on kik. To make a long story short, I find out that they have verified, as me, on ManyVids and ExtraLunchMoney - I already had an account on ELM.
Not only that - they have made about $200 in sales.
I messaged both companies, ManyVids took immediate action. ELM, essentially said "this person verified with an ID, they are legit" and I sent them even more proof that no, no they aren't legit.
Both sites sent me the "verification pic" that was used to verify- it was a sign I used to verify on a public site a long time ago, that requires a specific hand sign. So not only was the sign OBVIOUSLY photoshopped (I'm no expert, and I could tell), but it also included me doing some weird ass specific hand sign thing.
Neither site will give me IP info, or anything further. But they both confirmed that my photo was the photo used in the ID submitted. So it was my photo, photoshopped onto an ID. I can't imagine how shotty this must've looked.
Anyways, both accounts have been suspended, and luckily enough for me, I managed to get both sites to forward the earnings to me since the moron who created the fake pages couldn't cash out without entering legal information.
But it got me to thinking, would it be that much more difficult for these sites to require two verification pics? All it takes is one fan sign style pic to fake as anyone?
Has anyone had experience with this? It just makes me worried, because if this type of oversight can happen with verification, how careful are they with other info? Do these sites really care about the legitimacy of their sellers? Or just the bottom line? I fully accept that I should've been more careful with my pics, and watermarked from the start, but it's still frustrating!
My only advice would be to watermark everything.
