Catfishing Legal Harassment

[modelknowledge]

There member(s) on this forum opening up accounts and pretending to be models, photographers, agencies, and lawyers. Most of these members(s) have never posted anything on the site. I have complained several time to staff on here that this is happening but no one else is coming forward. Members are taking down photos because they are being harassed OR threatened with legal action from some anonymous poster pretending to be the above mentioned.



Here are signs that this is a fake:

1. They contact you via PM directly without contacting the owner, administrators, or moderators for you to take down all a models pictures claiming to be an agency. Guess what agencies do not own the rights of those images just the right to distribute them to promote a models career. Photographers own the rights the pictures, not the model, agency, or makeup artist, or whoever. If anyone is threatening you about pictures, contact the staff on here before you do anything.


2. You have started several threads for models on here and fashionspot. Yet, you are only being threatened via Bellazon with legal action and not Fashionspot. Why because its so much easier for wackos to get an account on here an mess with you.

3. If a model contacts, you and asks for you to take down personal pictures or personal information. Just do it. If a model contacts you and tells you to delete her thread, its probably just some hater from this website. Contact the staff.

4. If someone is threatening you with legal action against all the pictures you posted of one model, its probably fake unless the images are all from the same photographer or brand. Contact the staff for further assistance.

5. If someone is pretending to be an agent, call their bluff and contact the agency. I had "an agency" from a Spanish speaking country contact me and another me in English. I called the agency asking if that person worked for the agency. They didn't. I even emailed them inquiring about the model and if anyone at the agency contacted this site. Guess what? They didn't. I also contacted Fashionspot if they received the same threat and they did not.


I say this because I see members deleting images of certain models because some idiot is threatening them. When I ask them if they were contacting by a moderator about this, they all said no. None of this victims even contacted a moderator about it.

Sometimes you will get models contacting you or an agency asking you to change information. Sometimes the moderation staff is actually confronted by legal channels. A real lawyer or agency will contact this site about something being deleted not some member who might be 11 or can't speak English. Also, they will leave proper contact information. A models job is a lot of self promotion. Come on we all see their twitter and insatgram pages filled with selfies and behind the scenes snaps. A working model would never have a problem with you promoting his or her work. Just respect their privacy. Photographers don't want their work stolen. So if you are posting their work, always cite them. There are a few photographers who take legal action most of them don't have a problem with their work being promoted on here because we aren't profiting from it. Ask Sanja, she gets photographers to give her images all the time.

If anything like this has happened to you, please contact a moderator or administrator. If you see threads with lots of missing pictures, please report them so we can stop who ever is threatening people on here.

 

Also, if I have forgotten any weird scenario or information about this type of harassment, please fell free to add to this thread. Don't call members out in this thread. It's about solving problems, not creating more. 

 

[Prettyphile]

Thank you for the info, I can't begin to tell you how many people have contacted the staff, and me personally asking for me to delete the thread but I believe it's BZ's policy to just delete the lesser known models thread and not risk a possible lawsuit, but I'm not sure.

 

I'll keep all this in mind for the future though!

[Michael*]

Yeah, the staff get requests like this somewhat frequently. More often than not, the people who make said requests have simply moved on from their modelling careers and no longer want old and potentially embarrassing pictures floating around the internet. My general rule of thumb for those situations is, if a thread is less than two pages long, has remained untouched for more than a year and seems unlikely to be used again, I'll comply and remove the content. For anything bigger, we'd have to be provided with concrete evidence of identity.

 

I hate the thought of members feeling pressured into taking down content though, particularly when the person doing the pressuring could be any Thomas, Richard or Harold. A certain element of misbehaviour is of course unavoidable online, but no-one should be on the receiving end of harassment.

 

What I would say to anyone finding themselves in the position MK details above is to think of the mod squad as a trusted third party outsider and either don't hesitate to contact us directly, or tell the person making the request to get in touch. If they're on the level, they shouldn't have any reservations about doing things through official channels.

[Joe > Average]

Thanks for bringing this up and great points . 

[séve]

 

how to remove a chat thread 

because a person takes me all my pictures that I put it does not stay on bellazon

 

[tom830979]

Agree with all of the above.

When I was a little younger I met somebody online, we eventually met in person but something wasn't right.

I engaged a Private Detective to do a background check for me which gave answers to my concerns.