SWFL woman shocked when her personal photo is used for online ad

A SWFL woman is fighting back after an online retailer used a photo she had posted to Instagram to promote their product online.

Elizabeth Louis says she posted a photo of herself wearing a wig, and later, while browsing online, she says she found the same photo on Amazon. 

“I clicked on it. I was shocked. I felt violated,” Louis said. “I never purchased…never worked with the company or anything.”

Louis then called her mother in the middle of the night, panicked at what she found.

“I’m thinking are the kids okay? Are you okay? And she was too upset to even talk at the beginning,” her mother said.

Louis said she took the photo with her friend and posted it in 2016. The company allegedly cut out the friend and just used Louis for the ad.

WINK News attempted to contact the seller, Fan Show Hair, but they did not respond. And Louis’ photo is still on their website.

And now Louis and her mother are making it their mission to make sure others don’t fall victim to the same tricks.

“I just want people to be aware, young kids, to be aware, they need to do more research,” she said.

An Amazon customer service representative says that Amazon will remove photos found to be in violation of its codes if they are reported.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOUR PHOTOS

A disturbing trend has been going on social media where a user will create a fake profile using photos from another person and it’s called catfishing. It’s not new, but more and more people are falling victim.

The good news is there’s several things you can do to protect your photos and prevent being catfished.

1. Don’t Friend people you don’t personally know.
2. Don’t put your personal photos on Twitter since anyone can see them.
3. Set privacy controls to strict.
4. Add a watermark to your photos with your username.
5. Do a reverse image search on Google or TinEye.com to see if your photos are public.
6. Remove any inactive social media accounts you don’t use anymore.

REVERSE IMAGE SEARCH

Go to Google Images and drag and drop your image into the search bar or click on the photo icon to upload your image you want to search for. It’ll search the web and show you everywhere your photo is that’s public. But beware, if your photo is on a Facebook page that’s set to private, it may not show up.