Let me start by saying that this isn’t at all what I had planned to blog about today. But y’all, I’m in a mood. I’m furious. I’m just so incredibly frustrated.
Yesterday, I shared with y’all about how I recognized a shipping container scam on Facebook Marketplace. I saw red flags right away, so I didn’t actually come close to letting them separate me from my money, but I’m sure others have! And the thought of that makes me angry.
We’ve all come across scams online. If we haven’t been scammed ourselves, we undoubtedly know someone who has. My mom recently bought some huge, full, gorgeous faux ferns from a Facebook ad, or so she thought. What she actually received was a tiny fake fern with about 5-7 leaves that were about 10 inches long. It was a far cry from the massive, full fern in the advertisement that probably spanned at least three feet.
It’s to the point that I won’t trust any ad anymore unless it’s from a business I’m familiar with. I get a lot of ads from Gap, Loft, Ann Taylor, Old Navy, Aerosoles, Anthropologie, and other well-known stores. I trust those. I purchase from those. I enjoy seeing their ads because I can keep up with their sales. But I’m to the point that I don’t trust any store I don’t already know. And that’s really sad. That’s a huge disadvantage to the legitimate small businesses that are trying to get their products and services out there to the masses. But the fact is that the scammers are ruining it for them.
How in the world does Meta not have more control over this? I mean, they’re one of the biggest data collection companies in the world. They collect so much data on us that they know us (and our buying habits) better than we know ourselves. So if they have us so dialed in, how do they not have these scam companies dialed in? I just don’t get it. And it seems to be getting worse and worse by the day.
So I was thoroughly frustrated this morning, having already dealt with that scam shipping container company two days ago, when I got a message from a reader who told me about a company using my photos. This isn’t new. Companies have been stealing my photos for over a decade to use for their advertisements. I’m pretty sure every blogger out there has had to deal with this.
My first exposure to this was back in 2010 when a Texas interior designer stole photos of a room I decorated for the Waco Symphony Showhouse years ago and used my pictures to advertise her business. I wrote about it here. And it has happened many times since then. I’ve had contractors, builders, and handymen steal my photos and use them to advertise their businesses. It astounds me how some of these people feel so free to steal pictures of someone else’s work and then claim it as their own work and use it to advertise their services.
So when this commenter said a company was using my pictures, that’s what I expected. (Had I read her comment more carefully, I would have realized this was very different.) But this had nothing to do with my house or a room I had designed or decorated. No, the photos this company was using were OF MY FACE. They had literally stolen before and after pictures OF MY FACE to use to advertise their (probably scam) skin tightening product.
This is the website. The company name is tiny, but it’s called Meterperion…
They’re advertising this eye tightener cream, although the woman in the Facebook ad video uses it all over her face…
I have never used this company’s product, and I had never even heard of it until today. But that didn’t stop them from stealing my pictures and making this fake before and after to push their scam product.
First of all, what a stupid comparison! In that first picture, I don’t have on any makeup at all. In the second picture, I have on makeup, my hair is done, and the lighting is vastly different. But they also retouched that second picture! I have been using castor oil on my face (although I think that picture was taken before I started, or right after I started), and while castor oil has helped my skin tremendously, and I can see a huge difference in the fine lines and wrinkles on my face, it most certainly didn’t turn my face into porcelain, which is what it looks like in their ridiculous retouched photo above.
This is the photo they stole. I still have wrinkles. I haven’t seen that person above in their “after” photo in about 25 years.
I mean, I am so unbelievably angry at the sheer level of dishonesty and scams. Maybe we’d all be better off returning to a “buy local” mentality. You never know what you’re going to get online, but it seems to me like at least 50% of the advertisements out there are complete scams.
And FYI, I’m no longer using plain castor oil. I do love castor oil, but my bonus sister Cathi sent me some tallow and castor oil cream that she makes and asked me to try it out. That stuff is AMAZING!!! I had tried tallow before (the Kushi brand), and while I did like it a lot, it was never one of those products that I thought, “Oh my gosh! This is amazing!!” In fact, I had cancelled my subscription because I preferred my plain castor oil.
But when I started using Cathi’s tallow and castor oil balm, my skin LOVED it! It makes my skin feel so silky smooth and moisturized. So that’s what I use at night now. I still get the benefits of the castor oil with the added moisturizing benefits of tallow. Her stuff is so good that I’ve told her I can never be without it now. She’s just a one-person operation, but you can get some here. She makes small batches at a time, so if she’s sold out, you can check back later.
Anyway, the moral of the story here is that, in my humble opinion, the internet is now filled mostly with scammers trying to separate you from your money. Stick with tried and true businesses, or businesses suggested to you by people you now and trust. Because once you get outside of those businesses, it’s like the Wild West out there.
Also, feel free to go flood the comment section of this company’s advertisements with your honest opinion of them stealing pictures from me to advertise their scam product. I left two comments, but they deleted them. And if they stole my pictures, I would imagine that the rest of the “before and after” pictures on that product listing are stolen as well. And I’m sure the so-called “reviews” are fake also.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.