Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
As a photographer on the internet, I’m sure you’ve heard of plenty of scams people try to pull off. Some of them try to steal your money, and some of them want to hack your account. And sometimes it’s both.
Sadly, these things keep happening, and photographer Michael Trimboli has just spotted a new scam that’s going around on Instagram. If you’re a photographer or videographer, this one’s targeted specifically at you. So, pay close attention and crank up your skepticism to the max.
Gizmodo has uncovered almost two dozen complaints to the FTC over websites posing as Canon scamming them out of hundreds or thousands of dollars. New printer users are a fairly easy target because almost everybody who has a computer has a printer, not just photographers, and the hassles of setting them up and keeping them running smoothly aren’t exactly a secret, to the point of ridicule in popular culture.
So, people often need help setting them up or dealing with issues when they arise. This is what the scammers are taking advantage of, and more specifically, users looking for drivers for their shiny new printer. According to the report, the scam exploits an issue whereby Canon’s official website often seems to be down (although that’s not an issue I’ve seen personally), forcing users to Google alternate download locations.
Well, this is an odd turn. Typically, it’s fake “influencers” pretending to be somebody else to try to scam companies out of free gear. This time, though, Nikon has put out an announcement stating that the opposite is true in their case and that people have been contacting content creators on Facebook and YouTube pretending to be Nikon themselves – and possibly other companies.
Nikon says that the scammers “may attempt to gain personal or financial information and exploit it for financial gain”, which is pretty much how all online scams work, but here Nikon says that they’re contacting creators requesting they make a gear using a Nikon camera and offering sponsorship opportunities.
A new Instagram scam seems to be going around, and it’s pretty serious. It’s a good old phishing scam, designed to look just like a message from Instagram. But the scammers behind it will hijack your account and ask for money to give it back to you – and it goes up to $40,000.
Job scams targeting photographers seem to be more common than ever, and there has been a new one going around lately. If you use Indeed.com to find photography gigs, this one might hit you, so pay close attention.
Another scam aiming at photographers has been going around lately. Sadly, it’s pretty believable and seems legit, so it’s easy to fall for it. Frederik Trovatten was recently targeted by a scammer claiming to be a National Geographic photographer, and he shares his experience in order to warn all of you.
Instagram giveaways have been pretty popular. However, I’ve recently noticed a scam related to these giveaways, aiming at both those who give products away and those who hope to get them. It looks like a phishing scam, and in this article, I’ll tell more about it and how to avoid it.
To all photographers out there, keep your eyes wide open and be skeptical to the max. Yet another job scam seems to have appeared, offering you a job to shoot real estate. But of course, there’s a catch, and you could lose your money in an instant if you misread the red flags and fall for it.
An LA man who pretended to be an Apple employee accessed 4,700 iCloud accounts and stole 620,000 photos. Along with his co-conspirators, he would search for nudes which he would then share with them. There were reportedly more than 300 victims, most of them being young women.
There’s a new, highly elaborate, and even well-paid scam going around on Instagram. Some users are reportedly taking advantage of Instagram’s anti-impersonation, suicide, and self-harm policy. For $60, they will pretend to be someone else, report them for impersonation, and then “help them get back on Instagram” for $4,000.
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