I haven't seen any posts about this yet here on the forum, but there is already a longish thread about it on the iStock forum about the strange number of bulk XXL and XXXL downloads occurring in people's portfolios yesterday over Christmas weekend.

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=286152&page=1

One person having had 26 maximum sized Vetta sales all in one day. We are talking about possibly a $2,000 purchase for the photo buyer on that one alone. It could just be an end of the year buying spree for many buyers who are either planning on closing down their accounts, or who want to use up their buying budgets for the year, but to do that on a Sunday over Christmas weekend seems odd when most designers would not be working. Of course that is what we are all hoping it is though and nothing more than that. The disheartening issue is that iStock has not chimed in yet at all to say whether there is some sort of glitch in the system or not.

On the other hand, if this is an attack of Cyber theft then the ramifications of it for iStock could be huge and would explain why they are not saying anything about it for the meantime until they get some legal advice about how to handle it. It could be corporate image suicide for them and they may in fact not be able to pinpoint the source yet or are able to stop it at this point and possibly be the reason why they have kept quiet until they feel they have a handle on it. I hate to think it could be a disgruntled employee who has access to corporate buyer accounts with large credits in them and is using those accounts to download quality hi-res images for a bigger espionage plan.

The most serious of outcomes could be that someone has strategically chosen this time to hack into the system and download lots of large files when they know the iStock Admins are away and not on hand to take action within the iStock network system to stop the looting. What the thieves could be planning to do with all these high quality images is scary and they could use them to launch pirated CD-ROMS filled with our images and sell them for dirt cheap in countries like China and India for example where they would have no qualms about buying or using pirated intellectual property for commercial use. Think of the billions of people that could obtain free use to people's work on iStock in just those 2 massive countries alone.

If that were to happen, then both the financial and PR backlash for iStock could be huge. It could result in a large class action lawsuit from contributors who sue iStock for millions for compromising their intellectual property. Ultimately, iStock would be held responsible for the financial ramifications of an attack of theft like that and it could be millions as I said.

All of this is very scary. Yesterday I had 4 XXXL downloads in a row myself all on the same type of image and all occur within minutes of each other, which follows the same pattern everyone is talking about in the above iStock forum post. These 4 images of mine have never sold before in a pattern like that nor at those sizes consistently.

I am just hoping that all of these downloads are legit and that iStock Admins chime in very soon to let everyone know that everything is alright. Otherwise, if the outcome is the potential nightmare I just was talking about, then it would explain why iStock has been very quiet so far and that a big old hurricane could be about to hit the shores.

Let's us all keep our fingers crossed and pray for some good and comforting news from iStock. It would be great if my biggest fears are all false and alleviated very shortly and that this is/was just some sort of strange photo-buyer buying spree which put a bit of extra Christmas jingle in all of our pockets.

As Sue said, there is an existing post (by me).  You should repost in there, and leaf can lock this one.

Since you're new here, you might have missed we have a category for image fraud, which is the category the post is in.  Most people come to the front page of the site which lists all the recent posts so it would have been easily seen.  On the other hand, maybe it would be more "topical" in the "IS" category.  So, I've moved it.

Anyway, sorry, I don't feel like re-tailoring my post so it fits as an add-on to your post now that I have taken the time to write out all my thoughts on this.

Most computers have a functionality called "copy and paste" which would easily let you copy and paste your thoughts to the thread so that people discussing it don't need to look in two places.

we can take the conversation over to the other thread now.  This thread is locked
http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/fraud-going-down-at-is/