Who Stole My Pin?
Hey!! I hope you are rocking it on Pinterest and if you made it to this post, sadly you have probably had a pin stolen/redirected to those oh so awesome spammy websites!! So, what’s a blogger to do? I want to know…WHO STOLE MY PIN?!
HOW I FOUND THE PIN IN QUESTION
I am going to walk you through a few ways you can check if a pin or a pin image has been stolen or redirected. Just this week I was in checking some analytics on my Pinterest account and recently had a Pin go a bit viral (for me anyway). With being on the platform and in Pinterest circles for a while now I have read and seen bloggers get their pins stolen when popular pins take off.
These scammers see a pin driving traffic to your site and they want to redirect that to their site….shame, shame, shame. In my case, I just wanted to check to make sure. My viral pin was ok, so I checked other pins of mine too. When I was checking stats on this pin in particular-
I scrolled down and found this ⇒ image 
from the same post, below. I hovered over it and noticed it was linking to another website. Ugh… I guess I’ve made it on Pinterest – I have my first stolen pin.
Clicking on the pin brought up the full image, which was mine… and I clicked on the 3 gray dots on the upper area of the pin.
Now, before I take you into the next step. If you have a pin that is stolen. Copy the link of the stolen pin (trust me you will need this in a minute) and you will also need the URL of proof that it is your image/pin what have you.
I made the mistake of saving the pin to a secret board for later to report…but when I reported the pin all repins will be affected, so to just to be safe, copy the link, do not repin.
REPORTING THE PIN
- Click the 3 gray dots, it will give you a drop down.
- Click Report Pin
- Click My Intellectual Property
- Check Infringes on your copyright,
Pinterest will now take you through the process of reporting a pin. Fill out the info and go to IDENTIFY YOUR WORK, choose what has been compromised. Then this is where you will enter the URL where your property can be seen on your website.
Then you need to identify the item you want to be removed. Enter the pin URL you saved, and check it against the one in the box.
Click Remove, click strike, the person may be a repeat offender and we want these scammers off Pinterest.
Sadly, there are scammers, bots, and software that will scrape data and images all day just to steal them. This is one simple thing we can do to help. Pinterest is cracking down on this as fast as they can, it is just part of playing online.
FINDING A STOLEN PIN WITH THE LENS FEATURE
That funny square on the bottom of your pin image- click that to see similar images and if identical images pop up, hover over them to make sure they are going to your post, not some scammy website.
WHAT’S NEXT
Pinterest, by the next morning, had confirmed my request and had the image and pin removed. Also, they did say if I want to report additional material go to their Copyright Page.
Now, back to why you shouldn’t pin to a secret board. I received a second email stating that a Pin I saved had been part of a DCMA request and will be removed. They sent the URL and the image that was removed. Funny that when I went to the SO-CALLED website, the server could not be found.
Pinterest also removed the secret pin a had too, but be careful, if you have several pins removed, you may be penalized and your account could get suspended. I am NOT saying this may happen, but I have heard of the coincidence.
So, Thank you Pinterest for being on top of the situation.
I really hope you do not have to deal with the stolen pin issue. There are so may scammers, bots and software out there that will steal images, and your ideas. If these persons could harness the intellect and talent it takes to do harm into using their talents for good, the internet would be a happier place.
Thanks for the info!