If you’re a blogger, then you know how important it is to have high-quality images on your website. After all, what’s a blog without pictures? Unfortunately, there are some people out there who will steal your photos and use them on their own website without permission.
This can be really frustrating, especially if you put a lot of time and effort into finding the perfect images for your blog. In this article, we will show you how to find out if somebody has stolen your blog photos, and what you can do to protect yourself.
Why Is It Important For Us To Know When Another Blogger Has Stolen One Of Our Blog Photos?
Unless you’re a blogger yourself, you’ll never really appreciate how much work goes into producing content and quality images for your blog posts. I think we’ve all been victims where you’re happily scrolling through Pinterest, only to recognize one of your images and realize it’s been stolen.
It’s so frustrating that people think they can just lift images from wherever they please, and infringe your copyright in a matter of seconds. Using stock images can be really helpful when it comes to blogging, because it’s a lot easier than having to set up and make your own backdrops, and you don’t have to worry about blog image theft either.
Out of all the different social media platforms, I’ve discovered that Pinterest are the best with their easy yet simple DMCA form. You simply fill in your name and address, the link to the stolen pin and proof the image/s are yours by providing a link to your original post and that’s just about it.
However, what do you do if you don’t accidentally discover a copyright infringement? How do you know if your images are being stolen? I’ve got some tips for how to find out if somebody has stolen your blog photos…
How To Find Out If Somebody Has Stolen Your Blog Photos?
Google Chrome
The first one is very easy if you use Google Chrome as your browser. Chrome is my personal favorite browser as I find the whole layout very simple, yet intuitive, but Chrome makes it very easy for you to find out if your images have been posted elsewhere on the internet.
You simply do the following:
- Right click your mouse on one of your images
- Select ‘search Google for this image’
That will then search for other locations where that image exists. It takes a matter of seconds, but it’s amazingly helpful to help you track down any image theft, so you can then issue a DMCA take down notice to the website owner, or their host.
Use Copyscape
Another way to check if somebody has stolen your photos is to use Copyscape. This is a website that shows if a website has copyright problems and can help you find out if any of your photos are being used on other websites.
The easiest way to use this website is to copy the URL of the website you want to check and paste it into the search bar. Then, wait for the results to load. In the screenshot below, we can see how the website is tracking us, and we can also see in the bottom left that it shows if any part of the website is copyrighted.
Stolen Images – Reverse Image Search
Reverse image search is something I only discovered myself a couple of years ago, and it can be a little more long-winded compared to the Chrome image search. In order to do a reverse image search, you;
- Visit Google Images
- Select the little camera icon next to the text search box
- Once you’ve clicked that button, it will enable you to upload an image from your computer’s hard drive or phone’s memory to Google Images
- You can also upload an image just by using a URL which is a lot more handy for content creators as you can check whole blog posts for stolen images
- If you don’t use Chrome, you can copy and paste an image’s URL into the search box
Overall it really is very simple, and I know it’s extremely annoying to have to even check our images, and see if someone has stolen them.
However, I really recommend these quick tips on how to find out if somebody has stolen your blog photos. I will share a post on what you can do when you have had images stolen very soon, too.
Hi! My name is Gemma, and welcome to Miss Makeup Magpie, a UK based lifestyle blog sharing varied content to cover all genres.
