And they may not be done taking money from your account.

Quote from the email: "Please note that it may be necessary for us to remove royalties attributable to fraudulent downloads again in the future."

Did anyone see the posts about one of the fraudulent purchases being an EL? Why would a thief buy an EL? Something very fishy is going on over there. Also reports of images that don't even exist being downloaded fraudulently.

Boy, today is my BDE at iStock, including an EL. The fraud thing is a matter of past, right? I hope nobody is reporting fraud today.

Quote from: caspixel on February 03, 2011, 03:01
Did anyone see the posts about one of the fraudulent purchases being an EL? Why would a thief buy an EL? Something very fishy is going on over there. Also reports of images that don't even exist being downloaded fraudulently.

One of the site bugs was that for a while all Vetta sales were ELs (after they bundled the legal guarantee when they doubled  the prices). A couple of contributors confirmed that their ELs were for Vetta files and regular sales.

I am also one of the affected and also surprised at istock taking funds from my account without any notice.
The current thread on the istock forums is full of people angry about the conduct of istock lately, trying to milk the artists, cutting their commissions and just plain treating them like a cheap prostitute.

When, in that same thread, i mentioned posts were being deleted, for example one of mine where i state "Istock will do what they always do, let us rant for 3000 posts untill we grow tired of it and resume our sweatshop uploading to make them more (loads more) money"...

After which i received a rather blunt and intimidating sitemail from a known moderator stating if i wanted a ban i could get one real quick.
I replied with kindness and understanding but also stating i value my right to freedom of speech which resulted in an instant ban.

It seems iStock is quickly turning into a dictatorship where artists have to swallow just about anything they feel like stuffing in their throats and the ones that dare speak up are quickly silenced. Ironically kindof the same scenario is all over the news in Egypt right now... funny that.

Anyway, i feel they are taking this too far and they should value their artists by not treating them this way.
I don't know where this will end but i things are looking dim right now.
Kind regards, Kurt

Yikes. I didn't lose much - just 105.65, but this is not good news. First of all, it means that the thief spent about 550 dollars just on my images (my percentage being 19). Keeping in mind how many people report deductions and that some of them are way higher than mine, we are talking about some mysterious "thief" spending tens of thousands of dollars  on their "unauthorized" credit card. Why on earth someone would even need that many ... images?? Ok maybe there were several people doing that, but still - why would you want to steal images that way? They are not iphones or laptops or wallets. If you want some free images you can easily find them in many places on the internet, including ones that are supposed to be for sale.
This is very fishy. 

It was fishy when Big Stock did it also.  Where is the proof? After ten years why haven't these companies figured it out. These things don't just happen. They are allowed to happen by the stock companies. I did not loose much at all but why would I want to give them more responsibility for my work if they allow these things to happen. Maybe it's time to verify buyers better.

As I said in another thread, this is very fishy. First of all, the scale of it. If it was a stolen credit card or few, why would a person go online and buy images?? Thousands of them?? You can get them for free on the internet without any credit cards. Second of all, aren't credit companies ensured against this kind of thing? If someone lifted your card and bought a TV with it, and then you reported that card stolen, the credit card doesn't go to the TV store and demand it's money back. It a loss that they are insured against.
I would understand if Istock's software was doing some double counting and they were overcharging people - that would make sense. But CC fraud with buying images on this scale just doesn't!

Quote from: Noctiluxx on February 03, 2011, 03:55
I am also one of the affected and also surprised at istock taking funds from my account without any notice.

It's not without notice. This is what they said they would do. I'm not sure why people are getting worked up about it now after it was announced weeks ago (though, of course, many people won't have read the forum thread, they should have e-mailed at the time).

.

Quote from: stockmarketer on February 03, 2011, 04:58

Quote from: jsnover on February 03, 2011, 01:45
I believe the biggest number was sjlocke who had $3,400 removed

Just thought of this... we're all paying taxes on receiving this income in 2010, and then the income is taken away in 2011.  Not that the taxes on my small-ish batch will kill me, but what do you think, Sean?  Your damages are pretty significant.  Are we getting screwed here, or what?  

Seems like we're taking two serious hits here... iStock basically handed thousands of our images to criminals who are almost certainly going to somehow profit off of them, AND we are paying taxes on the "sale" of these images while the income is later taken away.  Am I missing something here?  I'm getting more furious the more I think about this.

IMAGINE> If it was a shop and goods the shop bought from a manufacturer. Would the shop not pay the manufacturer for the goods it sold to a credit card thief. NO. It has nothing to do with the manufacturer which in this case is us.

IMAGINE> If it was a shop and goods the shop bought from a manufacturer. Would the shop not pay the manufacturer for the goods it sold to a credit card thief. NO. It has nothing to do with the manufacturer which in this case is us.

Quote from: markrhiggins on February 03, 2011, 05:05
IMAGINE> If it was a shop and goods the shop bought from a manufacturer. Would the shop not pay the manufacturer for the goods it sold to a credit card thief. NO. It has nothing to do with the manufacturer which in this case is us.

And picture this scenario which is even closer to what happened to us.  Imagine that Apple finds that 30,000 iTunes downloads of Lady Gaga's songs were made with fraudulent credit cards.  Would it remove those royalties from Lady Gaga's future sales?  Hell no.  Apple screwed up and would take a major hit to its credibility in admitting the problem to Gaga and her label.  It would be a slap to her face to tell her they're going to tap her future royalties to make up for the crime.  But iStock has no problem slapping us after their security lapse.  We're no Lady Gagas, I guess.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on February 03, 2011, 04:53

Quote from: Noctiluxx on February 03, 2011, 03:55
I am also one of the affected and also surprised at istock taking funds from my account without any notice.

It's not without notice. This is what they said they would do. I'm not sure why people are getting worked up about it now after it was announced weeks ago (though, of course, many people won't have read the forum thread, they should have e-mailed at the time).

I think the fact that so much time went by with no word and no deductions...
Also the fact that the money just disappeared and then e-mails (poorly worded) slowly followed...
Add to that the magnitude of the reversals with no talk of gradual deductions (after the fact they said to contact CR if you wanted to work something out)...
Add to that the complete lack of documentation of the basis for such  a vast amount of refunds...
And the wording in the e-mail that says they'll do it again in the future...

And the icing on the cake is that we've been complaining for over a week trying to get payment for subscription sales that are still "delayed" and can't even get an update from them on when they're going to pay. They can't do that, but they can get money back from contributors.

Quote from: stockastic on February 02, 2011, 23:51
I am tremendously flattered to have just received an email from IStock informing me that one of my photos was selected for theft!   And that the commission will be removed from my account.

If I, the smallest fish in the IS pond, am among the victims, these guys must have really cleaned out the IS shop.   The image of mine which they stole has been downloaded only 128 times - not exactly a big seller in the IS world.  Obviously this thief has good taste.

Now I can look forward to my (formerly) best selling image appearing on scam sites and 'free' collections all over the world.

+ + +

Got the email too. Fishy stuff. Haven't had a zero download day for two years, but the deduction equals the amount earned that day.

$4.56 removed

Man 83 dollars removed.

I just merged the two threads about the email.

Can anyone beat Sjlocke's $3400 ... ouch
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=299222&messageid=5756512

Quote from: leaf on February 03, 2011, 08:08
Can anyone beat Sjlocke's $3400 ... ouch
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=299222&messageid=5756512

I would trade places with him any day!
-43$ for me

I hate IS.

I didn't receive any email or site mail.  I can only hope I'm left out of this.  It's hard to imagine they can not prevent this, maybe limiting what a new buyer can do until the CC is cleared.

Is it still the same fraud discussed earlier around Christmas?

Quote from: madelaide on February 03, 2011, 09:36
I didn't receive any email or site mail.  I can only hope I'm left out of this.  It's hard to imagine they can not prevent this, maybe limiting what a new buyer can do until the CC is cleared.

Is it still the same fraud discussed earlier around Christmas?

Yes, the same one.

I have 3 fraud downloads. I consider myself lucky. Some people lost lots of money, some lots of images. Think about stolen Vetta's..

IMHO IS has screwed up again. They are not even in a position to distinguish between a fake/stolen credit card and a safe one.