Author Topic: Fraud going down at IS (Read 46045 times)

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #50 on:** December 27, 2010, 13:16 »

Quote from: Worried Sick on December 27, 2010, 09:24

It is the same at iStock. Contributors have enough to worry about with the time, effort, and investment it takes just to create those images, upload, keyword, etc. So if they get stolen from the iStock site, I think iStock should and has to be responsible for the cost of the stolen product and cannot deny payment to their suppliers.

I agree. But many agencies seem to consider our work worthless in these cases. The fact is, of course, that the potential loss to us is far greater than the sale value of the image, since one download could lead to dozens of lost sales if it is resold or given away elsewhere.

I lost $1,200 in commissions at Alamy when they simply cancelled a transaction with the note "credit card fraud". I don't know how has those photos or what they did with them.

I'm pretty sure iS will feel able to cancel any fraudulent sale if it wants to, claiming that there is no material loss (which may well be untrue).

aeonf · « **Reply #51 on:** December 27, 2010, 14:52 »

Quote from: pancaketom on December 27, 2010, 13:12

Quote from: caspixel on December 27, 2010, 12:41
Quote from: jamirae on December 27, 2010, 12:27
oh yeah, and dont' forget that iStock is doubling all RC's on vetta images during the Vetta Sale. So all those exclusives who got these downloads just got a major boost!

The plot thickens...

here is my prediction - it was fraud, nobody gets the money, but they do get the RCs since it mostly benefits the Vetta/agency golden ones. In fact handing out RCs like election year candy will be the new way for IS to try to keep contributors happy while they slowly (or quickly) decrease their percentage.

As they say, predictions are hard, especially about the future.

I STRONGLY doubt anyone would get the RC's for these false downloads.

jamirae · « **Reply #52 on:** December 27, 2010, 15:04 »

no one has yet said they are false. seems too good to be true, yes, but until there is confirmation from iStock one way or the other, these are sales that have been made and credited to contributors' accounts.

ShadySue · « **Reply #53 on:** December 27, 2010, 15:25 »

Quote from: jamirae on December 27, 2010, 15:04

no one has yet said they are false. seems too good to be true, yes, but until there is confirmation from iStock one way or the other, these are sales that have been made and credited to contributors' accounts.

Making it so that the maximum credit bundle you can buy ATM is 120 indicates that, at the least, they're regarding events as 'suspicious'. Also if it were clear that there isn't a problem, they could easily say so. Or ask MichaelJay to say so, at least.

jamirae · « **Reply #54 on:** December 27, 2010, 15:50 »

Quote from: ShadySue on December 27, 2010, 15:25

Quote from: jamirae on December 27, 2010, 15:04
no one has yet said they are false. seems too good to be true, yes, but until there is confirmation from iStock one way or the other, these are sales that have been made and credited to contributors' accounts.
Making it so that the maximum credit bundle you can buy ATM is 120 indicates that, at the least, they're regarding events as 'suspicious'. Also if it were clear that there isn't a problem, they could easily say so. Or ask MichaelJay to say so, at least.

indeed. good point.

madelaide · « **Reply #55 on:** December 27, 2010, 16:16 »

Everything looks very fishy indeed, and I am so insignificant that I didn't get any of these sales!

Anyway, my credit card never gave me any feedback on what might have happened when I had my card cloned out, if there was any suspicious store or service that I should avoid. I didn't have to pay for expenses I signaled as not being mine, they gave me a new card and this was all. And I didn't even use to pay an insurance for the card, so if there was any chance they could charge me, they probably would, but it must have been some flaw in their system, the verification or whatever. I think companies never disclose what they did wrong. All transactions were signed by then, so they could not charge me for something with a fake signature. Probably today, with so many electronic transactions and having to give our security code in any online purchase, I'm not sure we are that protected.

Susan S. · « **Reply #56 on:** December 27, 2010, 17:23 »

Credit card fraud online is absolutely rife, and I'm just not sure who swallows the cost. In the last two years on two different credit cards (both pin and chip - they are no more secure than the ordinary old swipe ones) we've had about 15000$Aus fraudulently charged to various international online stores (avoid using credit cards with Sydney cab drivers, especially if they claim the first card doesn't work and then want to swipe another one and no transactions turn up for the cab fare in the next couple of days - hindsight is a wonderful thing!). We got the money back so I don't know if the bank or the retailers ended up out of pocket.

qwerty · « **Reply #57 on:** December 27, 2010, 19:25 »

Part of the very high percentage rate on interest charged on credit cards is used to cover for fraud.
Obviously if banks etc can reduce the amount of fraud they make more money by keeping more of this extra money they charge. So in essence the cost of fraud is averaged across all customers who pay interest on their card.

If the banks didn't cover the card holder for most of these fraud cases, people would stop using them and the banks would miss out people using money at a very lucrative interest rate (up to 25%)

personally Istock is taking more than 80% commission, I think they should cover the theft and they should have processes in place to minimise the losses.

Surely there should be someone manning a 24/7 business turning over hundreds of million dollars a year all the time for such issues.

cathyslife · « **Reply #58 on:** December 27, 2010, 20:07 »

I don't know if this is related, but it sure feels like the site has been hacked to me.

I have been deactivating my low sellers for a couple of months now. I go to the image page, under Administration, type my reason for deactivating, then hit Deactivate. To get back to my port, I hit the back button twice, and I am back to the page where I was in my port.

Just now, I did those exact same steps that I have been doing for months, except now, when I get back to the port page where I was, all the thumbnails are missing. I just deleted 26 images on Dec. 23 and all worked ok. So this is something new. Plus, the images that I did deactivate on Dec. 23 are still showing in my port. It was only taking a day or two for them to disappear. So does that mean that since everyone is gone, the database doesn't get updated every so often? Someone has to actually be there to have the updates done?

Or is everything on "hold" because of this latest fiasco?

BooKitty · « **Reply #59 on:** December 27, 2010, 21:03 »

It certainly seems to be a bit of a mess. If it is fraud I hope that IS lets people keep their sales. When CC fraud happens to any retailer they have to eat the cost and they just pass it along to the consumer not the supplier.

I had three sales today (a good day for me) that were for more than $1.00 per credit. I hope I get to keep my $8.80.

BooKitty · « **Reply #61 on:** December 28, 2010, 07:46 »

^^ Can a merchant get some kind of insurance against this kind of CC fraud or is just a write-off? Just curious.

jm · « **Reply #62 on:** December 28, 2010, 09:10 »

I always dreamt of stock agency that would have Shutterstock's number of downloads , review times of CanStock, immediate on line support of GLO, Veer's keywording possibilities, possibility of Zoonar's own picture shop, Dreamstime's Level System etc. I wasn't sure about i Stock but now I know - iStock's Christmas Holidays sales - no other agency is even close. And not to forget... their human approach to their employees - two weeks of holidays probably as a reward for excellent work done on newly relaunched site. Nice to see that money don't rule this world.

NancyCWalker · « **Reply #63 on:** December 28, 2010, 09:48 »

Whenever there has been fraud or a return by the buyer IS has always deducted the royalty amount from the contributor. It happened to me a few years. It's common, though controversial, practice amoung most of the micro sites.

lightscribe · « **Reply #64 on:** December 28, 2010, 09:57 »

This isn't fraud, just everyone needing to spend credits before the 1st. Makes sense to me.

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #65 on:** December 28, 2010, 10:12 »

Quote from: azurelaroux on December 28, 2010, 09:48

Whenever there has been fraud or a return by the buyer IS has always deducted the royalty amount from the contributor. It happened to me a few years. It's common, though controversial, practice amoung most of the micro sites.

No they don't. IS has always eaten the cost of credit card misuse, as opposed to other sites.

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #66 on:** December 28, 2010, 10:14 »

Quote from: lightscribe on December 28, 2010, 09:57

This isn't fraud, just everyone needing to spend credits before the 1st. Makes sense to me.

Obviously you haven't read any of the posts on the buying patterns. Besides, businesses who needed to spend their credits before the 1st (why would they need to do that?), would not spend them in the wee hours of the morning on the day after (a Sunday, even) Christmas.

NancyCWalker · « **Reply #67 on:** December 28, 2010, 10:42 »

They have always sent me an email stating that the money would be deducted and why. I've had both "suspicious transaction" and "returned file". This was back when I was exclusive.

leremy · « **Reply #68 on:** December 28, 2010, 11:42 »

I do think IS site is hacked.
I don't think the hacker hacked a credit card account or some real money transaction thingy.
The hacker should have hacked into the system of IS, and increase his credits to perhaps a million, and quickly use those credits to download all the Vettas.

Like some other forumers said, with a collection of Vettas, he can easily print CDs with those and sell at China for $10 a piece.
Or maybe upload to Hotfile.

jamirae · « **Reply #69 on:** December 28, 2010, 11:51 »

Quote from: leremy on December 28, 2010, 11:42

I do think IS site is hacked.
I don't think the hacker hacked a credit card account or some real money transaction thingy.
The hacker should have hacked into the system of IS, and increase his credits to perhaps a million, and quickly use those credits to download all the Vettas.

Like some other forumers said, with a collection of Vettas, he can easily print CDs with those and sell at China for $10 a piece.
Or maybe upload to Hotfile.

this makes the most sense to me. I was thinking the same thing.. they just hacked in and gave themselves unlimited credits.

KarenH · « **Reply #70 on:** December 28, 2010, 12:09 »

New update on the site from Joyze:

"In the past 6 days we have received a large amount of fraudulent purchases and downloads. We are working fervently to add new security measures to our purchasing process to prevent this from continuing or happening again. The implementations are happening as we speak.

While we don't normally correct royalties on fraudulent downloads, in this case, we will need to make an exception. We'll notify you next week of the royalty amount that will be adjusted from your account before we do so. Redeemed credits will also be corrected."

Six days???

jamirae · « **Reply #71 on:** December 28, 2010, 12:21 »

really... I didn't realize it had been hitting the site for 6 days. wow. so it started prior to the closing of the office for the holidays, but seemed to have peaked right after christmas.

thankfully my downloads were slow/normal for this time of year so I doubt I have any that will be charge-backs, but even if it were, they would be minor.

wonder how far back this will set things with getting a final year-end tally for everyone's RCs. Not that mine matter since I know I'm at the bottom of the rung anyway.

cathyslife · « **Reply #72 on:** December 28, 2010, 12:23 »

I don't know how you exclusives are ever going to be able to figure out how much money you are supposed to be getting, with all of the notifications, adjustments, fixes, etc. etc. that have been happening the past months.

I'm one of those conspiracy theorists who think it has all been purposeful confusion.

cathyslife · « **Reply #73 on:** December 28, 2010, 12:43 »

Wait, admin just checked in...

lisafx · « **Reply #74 on:** December 28, 2010, 12:58 »

LOL, Cathy! That's harsh!

I would not be surprised if there is a hold on being able to make payout requests until this is sorted out. As Sean pointed out in the IS thread, it will be way too confusing if people are requesting this money, getting paid, and then having hundreds or thousands of dollars in negative balances in their accounts once the fraud sales are deducted. Makes more sense to hold off on payouts.

Of course that would suck big time, though. Hopefully they are able to identify and deduct the fraudulent charges before the Jan 3 deadline to request payouts.

I'm not surprised Istock is not going to eat this one. It is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fraudulent sales. No company is likely to take such a loss by paying out those royalties.

I certainly do hope they aggressively prosecute anyone who tries to distribute all those pictures, if they possibly can.

Mostly this seems to serve as a wake-up call that Istock can't shut down over the holidays anymore.

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Author Topic: Fraud going down at IS (Read 46045 times)

BaldricksTrousers

aeonf

jamirae

ShadySue

jamirae

madelaide

Susan S.

qwerty

cathyslife

BooKitty

johngriffin

BooKitty

jm

NancyCWalker

lightscribe

Sean Locke Photography

Sean Locke Photography

NancyCWalker

leremy

jamirae

KarenH

jamirae

cathyslife

cathyslife

lisafx

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