What Do You Think?

[marieodess]

http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/30/11471856-moms-facebook-photo-pops-up-on-porn-dating-sites?lite

Mom's Facebook photo pops up on porn, dating sites

By Helen A.S. Popkin
2012/04/30

When Jules Rahim posed poolside in a bikini three years ago, she never expected her picture would be posted on either a porn site or a dating website. But that's exactly what happened, the Straits Times of Singapore reports.

The Singapore mother of four (including a newborn) found out about her inadvertent adult modeling career when a friend called her with the awkward news. The bikini picture Rahim posted on her Facebook was now being used to solicit pornography. A few days later, another friend advised her that the same picture showed up on dating site sgGirls.com, illustrating an ad for a charge-per-minute telephone chat line.

"It's embarrassing," Rahim, 32, told the Straits Times. "People I know may think wrongly of me."

Rahim, it seems, is the victim of photo-jacking — the exploitation of photos scraped from Facebook and other Internet outlets. And Rahim isn't the only victim of image exploitation. The Straits Times reports there are at least two other women in Singapore whose social media photos showed up on the same sites where Rahim's picture appeared.

Rahim filed police reports against both the pornography and dating sites, and intends to file a harassment complaint as well. But there's little, if anything, authorities can do about it. Photo-jacking occupies a legal gray area in Singapore, as well as the United States.

In February, police in a small Massachusetts town asked the FBI for assistance after photos of at least 17 high school girls turned up on pornographic websites. For the most part, the girls were fully clothed in the photos, which were reportedly taken from Facebook and other social networks. As with Rahim, the victims had little legal recourse against the website.

The photos didn't constitute child pornography because the girls were fully clothed. Further, the U.S. Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects Internet service providers — including websites and blogs, in this instance — that host the purloined images. Victims who want their photos removed have the option of claiming copyright infringement. Even then, the burden of proof remains on the plaintiff, as the copyright is generally owned by the person who snapped the shot, not the person in the picture.

In Singapore, Rahim isn't letting it drop. "I want to sue them," Rahim told the Straits Times. "These websites have no right to use my pictures without my consent." The dating site sgGirls.com is hosted in Dusseldorf, Germany and the pornography site is hosted in Los Angeles, California — so both sites operate outside of Singapore law enforcement. Rahim has attempted to contact sgGirls.com site and request that the site remove her photo, but hasn't heard back.

The obvious advice in such cases of photo explotation is to remind users to lock down their social media privacy settings, but even then it may not be enough. It's always possible the perpetrator is a so-called "friend," on Facebook and elsewhere. And even the tightest privacy settings can't protect you from bad "friends."

[troach]

Another example from a few years ago.
I can not tell people enough how important is to be carful online especially with what they post even for "just friends".



http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/11/smith-family-photo-czech-advertisement



American family's web photo ends up as Czech advertisement

Smiths from Missouri only heard about it when a friend travelling in Prague saw them on a grocery store poster

Maev Kennedy
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009

When the Smiths of Missouri – an all-American family with the regulation two blond children – posed for their Christmas photo, little did they know they would end up on a billboard thousands of miles away in the Czech Republic.

Just under a fortnight ago, a family friend of Jeff and Danielle Smith was travelling in Prague when he spotted some familiar faces beaming out of a poster advertising a grocery store's home delivery service.

He took a photograph and emailed it to his friends in St Louis – kindly translating the caption that promises "we will prepare and deliver your requests in two business days".

The picture was indeed of the admirably white-toothed Smiths and their two smiling children. Danielle had been so proud of the image taken by a photographer friend, Gina Kelly, that she had not only sent it out as a Christmas card to family and friends, but also posted it on her blog and other social networking sites, including Momlogic where she identifies her children as "sweet and sassy Delaney" and "loveable and crazy Cooper".

Danielle has expressed her surprise at the news of their international fame: "Interesting. Bizarre. Flattering, I suppose. But quite creepy."

The shop owner was equally shocked. Mario Bertuccio, who runs the Grazie store in Prague, said he found the image on the internet and thought it was computer-generated. He has promised to remove it and email an apology to the Smiths – and said if they lived nearer he would send them "a bottle of good wine".

In her blog on the Extraordinary Mommy site, Smith reflects: "So this is the price we pay for indulging in social media, I guess."

She had no idea the image could be used, she said, and would not have given her permission, but admits she was naive in putting up a high-resolution version on the website. She won't be doing that again – but said she would continue to post images of her family.

The smiley Smiths have now gone global. The site has registered 180,000 hits but Danielle writes that she is blocking the small percentage "who are commenting only to say that a member of my family (or all of us) are ugly".