This is directed at wordpress users because I cant stand blogspot. I mean, cough, I dont know much about it.
This morning while checking out a new stat tracker, I noticed that something of mine had been downloaded twice. When investigating further, I realized that two people had downloaded pictures of my daughter from my web page.
Why? I am not sure. And it makes me sick to wonder.
I started doing some investigating on how I can better protect my images without branding them in their entirety across the photo. I don’t prefer the way it looks on my site to have a big MOMDOT running through the middle of the post. It feels more commercial then personal and that is not what I am going for when I am sharing photos from my life.
The simple solution would be a right click disable. But I also wanted the options for users to right click my banner codes on the site, so removing right click didn’t seem wise either.
I found this plugin called iProtect, located here, where you can install and it simply overlays your images with a transparent file. If someone right clicks your photo to save, it will save as a blank file.
So that photo looks like this if its saved:
See…blank. Nada. Nothing. No more Charlotte. Get off my blog.
Of course this wont stop the most savvy of Internet users if they are really interested in confiscating a photo from your page, but it will stop those that want a quick stealing solution and hopefully move them on from your page-without your child’s photo in tow.
~Trisha
Just FYI on a mac you can still drag and drop your image to the desktop to copy it… I just did it to test. I wish there was a way to lock up images like you see on pro photo blogs. Totally disable grabbing them… anyone?
I’ve been using Embed Image Technology on my blog
You can give it a look here:
http://www.embedanything.com/image-how-it-works
You can never 100% prevent people from stealing your images which sucks. But by using Embed Image, I at least get credit, SEO, and traffic from people embedding my photos rather than stealing them or hotlinking.
I’ve been getting a huge boost in traffic this way, and it’s the best thing I’ve found out there to protect my images. I always like trying new ways people come up with to stop image theft and the blank overlay is good via iPortect, but people still screengrab it…
Tineye is a great website to find who’s taking your images.
Appreciate the post Trisha!
- C.B.
Wow, thank you so much! This came up first under a google search for “can I protect my photos in wordpress”. I use bl%*#er right now but am thinking of switching for many reasons.
I just found an old photo of my daughter for sale on some obscure site and it is Freaking. Me. Out.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. Thank you so much for posting that iProtect, it’s what I’ve been searching for. When searching on google under “how do I protect my images on wordpress?” your blog came up #4. In searching for info on watermarking your images I discovered a thing called content scraping where people or bots steal your content and images!
I don’t see my comment…trying again:
Thank you!I
Good to know! Just a great way to protect your babies and your work.
Good for you Trisha! Anytime you post pics of your family (@extraordmommy would know from her CNN story like 6 months ago) you run the risk of getting them stolen by ANYONE. Way to take back control and take responsibility at the same time. And thanks for sharing!
I am all for putting my name on it.. I don’t feel like any right click or app will protect my photo. I’m sure someone can still just print screen and crop you know?
Very creepy indeed! Too many scary people out there–I would never want my pictures stolen!
Wow, that is cool how you could see that it was stolen! I’m a blogspotter so i know nothing about whatever cool sitetracker thingy you used. But check this out ladies, I hate to break this to you but you must know.
There are certain programs that allow people to take a snapshot of those pics anyway (i.e. Windows Vista, add-ons in Firefox). I could easily do it with this whole webpage and crop the pic I wanted. (Not that I do that for theft purposes!!!! BTW.) But you need to know that your going to have to double up on protecting your pics. Do this by adding a signature or a watermark on those babies! Sorry. But the truth will set you free.
I’m still figuring out WordPress, so this could be user error on my part, but when I installed the plug-in it covered all of my photos and you could only see the left edge. Hmmmm….
Do you know of any other photo proctection plug-ins?
Aww man. I installed the plugin but can’t use it. It completely messed up all of my image alignments for some reason.
That’s very creepy! Wished there was something like this for blogspot.
Thanks so much for this Trisha, hopefully now I won’t see any of my pregnancy photos floating around.
Just installed it! Thanks Trisha =)