My client recently worked hard at creating an image to use for her Facebook status update. It turned out great! So great…five people shared the image and one person stole the image. This person actually took the image, erased my client’ contact info, cut out the different images she liked in the picture and included them into the “new” picture she created.

Is this fair? Is stealing or copyright infringement the proper thing to do? No, it isn’t  but the reality is this happens. Whether or not you have disabled your online images from being copied, it still happens. Think print-screen. Do that and you can easily copy any image.

This is the reason talented artists are afraid to post their work online. No one wants their hard work stolen or manipulated. Worse, most times we have no idea our work has been stolen.

The police are not going to come and arrest you. Although you could receive a letter asking you to remove or take down the image. It has happened and you could be sued. For a small business owner, that could be financially devastating to your business.

Here is a great tool to monitor images. This may not be 100% accurate, but it’s a tool from Google that will give you an idea to see if anyone is using your image.

If you are creating a logo or launching a new product with an image using stock photography, this may be a great tool to see how popular that image is, where it’s used and whether or not those results are best for your brand. Click on the video to learn how to access this tool.

Have you had your images used without your permission?