If you’re a blogger who’s been finding their images stolen on Pinterest, this post’s for you!

Finding and Reporting Stolen Pinterest Images

Hey guys! So it’s been FOREVER since I’ve written a new post. I recently got a new job with Mediavine and I’m loving it! Unfortunately during my training it takes up a lot of my free time. As I get acclimated to my role there and the mental bandwidth is less, I promise to post more! In the mean time, this post is for my blogging friends.

A HUGE issue with Pinterest lately is stolen content.

For those of you who don’t know what it is or what it means, people are purchasing scraper programs that steal thousands (or tens of thousands) of images off of Pinterest that belong to and were created by bloggers. They are taking those images and redirecting them to their own crappy websites, usually unrelated or only vaguely related to the images they stole.

If you’re not a blogger, (maybe you’ve thought about starting a blog?) you may have noticed that there’s a lot of pins on Pinterest lately that look great but go to junk sites that have nothing at all to do with the pin you thought you clicked on.

Super frustrating, right?

That’s usually because the pin you clicked on has an image that was stolen.

Contrary to what some people think, this is in fact a big deal. It’s intellectual property theft, and it is illegal.

Not only that but I’ve been working really hard to improve my Pinterest strategy and even took the BEST Pinterest course for bloggers, and so this is SUPER aggravating to watch bottom feeding lowlife thieves profiting from my hard work!

How do you find out if your pins are being stolen on Pinterest?

The video walks through exactly how to know if your pins are being stolen, how to find them, what to do to penalize the thief PLUS goes into how to avoid resharing stolen content.

I was even seeing my own stolen images being recommended to me by Pinterest as “pins they thought I’d love”. SERIOUSLY PINTEREST? It’s not bad enough that you’re allowing my content to be stolen but now you’re recommending it above my ACTUAL content too?

Oh, and as you’ll see in the video, the stolen content is ranking higher in search than my actual content too. Fabulous.

How can you tell if a pin or Pinterest image is stolen?

When you hover over a pin, you can see the URL it’s directing to. If that URL does not match the watermark on the image, there’s a chance it’s stolen. If you click a pin about the best side hustle for introverts and the site redirects you to something totally unrelated like a weight loss supplement pill, chances are it’s a stolen pin and image. You can see in the image below, that’s MY work. My image that I created with my website name on the bottom, STOLEN and redirected to some other junk website. NOT COOL.

If you are a content creator, I encourage you to report all your pins that you find that are stolen. The more this gets reported, the more seriously it will be handled. Yes, it’s a huge time suck and a massive pain in the ass, but these people are STEALING from you.

If you are a casual Pinterest user, I implore you to check to see if the content is stolen before you re-pin it. Sharing stolen content hurts those of us who spend a lot of our time and money creating valuable content while rewarding those who steal it.

It takes just a few seconds to report your stolen content. Unfortunately if you find content you think is stolen you cannot report it unless it belongs to you, but you CAN take a moment to forward the link to the owner so that they can report it.

This is one of the biggest Pinterest complaints so far this year. It’s happening ALL over the place to bloggers and content creators of all sizes.

I hope that the video below helps you locate your stolen content and take action to bring this rampant intellectual property theft to a halt!

For more information on the DMCA or Digital Millenium Copyright Act click here.

How to contact Pinterest

To bulk report stolen pins, contact Pinterest directly at copyright@pinterest.com. Be sure to include ALL the information from the Pinterest Copyright Infringement Report or they can’t help you.

You can view Pinterest’s official policy on copyright protection here.

It sounds like Pinterest is now FINALLY taking this issue seriously. Of course it’s never going to be possible to remove ALL of the stolen content and fake accounts, but snagging the bulk of them is going to require everyone to pitch in and do their part to report, and stop re-sharing stolen content!

Thanks everyone and I hope you find this post helpful in locating and reporting stolen images on Pinterest.

If you have any questions at all, I will do my best to answer them in the comments below.

Are you experiencing stolen pins as a blogger? Share your stories below too!