A client received the following message via their website contact form the other day and queried its validity.
Hi,
This is Melonie and I am a professional photographer.
I was confused, frankly speaking, when I saw my images at your web-site. If you use a copyrighted image without an owner’s permission, you must be aware that you could be sued by the creator.
It’s not legal to use stolen images and it’s so сheap!
See this document with the links to my images you used at Website redacted and my earlier publications to get the evidence of my ownership.
Download it right now and check this out for yourself:
Link redacted
If you don’t delete the images mentioned in the file above during the next couple of days, I’ll file a to your hosting provider stating that my copyrights have been severely infringed and I am trying to protect my intellectual property.
And if it doesn’t help, for damn sure I am going to take legal action against you! And I won’t give you a prior notice again.
[email protected]
Its a scam, but as they go its a clever one, it uses fear to get people to download a file, that file contains malware which then infects the users computer. Keep your eyes open for things like this, and if in doubt contact your web designer, they should know exactly where the images on your site came from.