Pinterest is one of my guilty pleasures. I think many of you can relate. But.
Yes, there is a HUGE but coming. I am so saddened to see how much thievery goes on with Pinterest.
I really hope that you my friends aren’t helping these thieves get their site stats up by repinning their thieving sites.
What does it mean to be a content thief? I know not all of you are bloggers.
A content thief is someone who takes images and recipes (or other content) from someone else’s site without their permission and posts it on their site. Sites get credit for how many visitors come to their site and how many times someone shares their link on the web. Some of these folks fall in a gray area by crediting the original source in their posts – search engines don’t like copied content.
Think of it this way. You take an awesome picture and write a great story to go with it. Someone else comes along, copies ALL of your work and posts it to their site and then spreads it all over the internet. They don’t tell people YOU wrote it or that it is your picture and lots of people see it, like it and give them the credit for your hard work. How would you feel about that?
I don’t have to explain to you why you shouldn’t repin, repost, or share stolen content. Right?
How To Spot Content Thieves:
- There is NO recipe on the page. Only an image. This is your first alert that this person did not write the content themselves. Go to the original site (if it is sourced) and pin from there. Give that person credit for the hard work they’ve put into that post, recipe, image, etc. I have several places I’d like to use as an example but I don’t want to drive any more traffic to their sites.
- The image url or watermark on the image do not match the site you landed on. Double check to see if it is a guest post but more than likely they lifted the entire post form someone else. Go to the original site and let the site owner know about the thief. It’s the right thing to do.
- The image leads to a spam site. Report to Pinterest.
- There are no comments or comments are closed. We bloggers live for comments! So if you don’t see any, it’s a red flag. If they have comments turned off, this can also be a red flag.
It would be very easy to stop these thieves if you would take the extra few seconds to check your source before you repin something. It’s a tiny bit of extra hassle but writers work hard to earn their readers, gain followers, and earn their rank with search engines. Don’t help someone who is lazy get away with violating our copyrights. It is illegal!
And on a side note. Don’t pin an entire site and mislead us by saying it’s a certain recipe. Pin the actual recipe! I hate having to dig through a site to try to find the recipe I thought I was going to repin. *This is a pinterest pet peeve 🙂
Have you come across sites that are stealing content and getting pinned on Pinterest? Have you reported them to the original authors or Pinterest? Do you have any Pinterest tips? Or pet peeves?
Blessings,
Photo Credit chanpipat at Free Digital Photos.
I really had no idea. I will look more closely now. I wondered why some pins don’t lead to anything but an image. Now I know.
How do you find the owner of an image for a recipe if the only thing the site has posted is the image? Can the owner do anything against those stealing their pictures and writing?
GREAT question! You can find the original source for an image two different ways. Here is one way using Google: How To Find the Original Source Of An Image On Pinterest or you can use TinEye to look it up. The owner can send a cease and desist letter to the site owner. And if they want to, they can sick their attorney on them. It’s illegal and they can get sued for the theft.
thanks for letting us, who aren’t bloggers and don’t know about this, what to look for and making us aware.
Thank you for posting this. I’ve seen some of what you mentioned but I didn’t really know what to do. I can’t imagine stealing from someone like that. Now I will be sure before I pin anything.
Amen! Well said. I hate thieves!