On Saturday, a co-worker’s cousin (who I have met a couple of times) was reading the Jerusalem Post website and noticed my photo with the caption “ask me out” on the homepage sidebar:
Recognising this as the photo I use for work and thinking that I was married, she clicked on the ad.
It took her through to a Jewish dating site member profile:
This profile was using four of my photos - (my work photo from here and here), me and my husband at the NetGuide New Zealand awards, a photo I use as my display picture on a number of sites and one of me on holiday in 1999. One mystery to me is where the NetGuide Awards photo and holiday photo are even stored online at all!
I contacted the site (which is based in Canada) on Saturday requesting the images be removed but heard back nothing.
Not only did “Maya” use my photos without my permission (it may even have been a made up profile by the site itself), they were also using me to advertise their site on at least one popular website - The Jerusalem Post.
Tuesday morning I spoke with a Canadian lawyer specialising in internet issues who advised me to email both the dating site and the Jerusalem Post requesting again that they be removed within 48 hours and to inform me of their removal or to start legal proceedings and to make this embarrassing situation very public - which I did so.
Yesterday I received this rather odd email back from the dating site:
– do not edit –
Hello Rachel,
Thanks for your email. As per your request, your photos have been removed. However, profiles with pictures do generate more activity.
Regards,
The Jmatch team.
Copy and paste job anyone?
Finally, this morning before the 10:30am NZT deadline the Jerusalem Post removed my photo! Disappointingly, I never heard anything back from them.
I write this in the hope that this sort of thing won’t happen again to any of you and as a word of caution that photographs on dating websites may not be what they seem!
And if anyone can find where the photo of me and my husband is online, or the one of me on holiday in Australia in 1999 is, that would be fantastic. The person finding the photos must be pretty clever and not just using a simple Google search. It’s bugging me that I can’t even find them!
your thoughts
Robyn
What a strange situation! And it’s really odd that the fake dating profile used a photo of you and your sweetie.
I’m glad you were able to get it sorted out… sort of.
Pete
I’m glad you’ve had them taken down, it’s so rude that the JP haven’t even had the dignity to e-mail you and apologise.
I don’t remember having seen the net guide photo before but the holiday one is familiar - is it possible that it wa son your old journal at somepoint?
Hugh
how odd! I know of someone that saw their picture in an advertisment for a major power co. in the countries biggest newspaper. must of nabbed it off flickr or something. still, they should know better.
Silvi
Oh my god, this story makes me super paranoid! Makes me feel like removing all of my online pictures. I really hope you can find out exactly what happened.
Aimee
Holy cow! That is super crazy, and what’s worse is the way the companies handled it. However, you were lucky that someone saw it and recognized it as your photo so at least you were aware and could do something about it.
Scary stuff though!
m
another reason why I try to avoid being photographed at the events when photos will be online..
Ed
This has been an on going problem for a lot of people this year.
It seems that the people behind the Jewish dating sites jmatch, jlove, jdate have been creating a lot of fake profiles to bump up their sites.
The original scam involved the sites searching social network sites for Jewish sounding names and pulling as much info and photos as possible.
Other complainants have had as much luck as you did trying to remove the actual profile (although in most cases without the photos the profiles had no other connection to that person).
Keep an eye on that profile and make sure your photos are not added back again.
Mike
Scary stuff. Although, not a problem I am likely to have unless the dating site wants to lose members.
Jeremy
There’s a good chance the profile was created by an affiliate of the dating site and not by the site itself. There are quite a few shady individuals out there who create fake dating profile and dating ads so that they can drive signups to the site and get commission.
There’s a good post on this here: http://www.netmorality.com/editorials/fake-profiles-part-2-online-dating/
It’s annoying as hell and I just wish there were better laws in place (or people to enforce existing laws) that could help prevent this B.S.
paul
On the bright side, you’re attractive enough that people want to steal your photos.
Since you normally post on design, I just want to say that the Jerusalem Post is hideous. I felt like I had been hit in the head when I went there.
Someone needs to send them another letter letting them know it’s okay not to put EVERYTHING IMAGINABLE on their main page.
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