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Getty Images Letter Forum / Latest image scraper – a troll by any other name

« on: January 10, 2013, 06:08:27 PM »

Today as I was looking over our server logs for the New Year to make sure my new security measures were keeping the bad bots at bay, I came across this little nugget of info in my browsers used log…

BPImageWalker/2.0 (www.bdbrandprotect.com)

Haha! a new image scraper and from the well laid out name of the browser (they rarely are this kind), I knew they were not scanning my server to help me out in any way.  A little research and I found out that this Canadian based company does “brand protection” services, and one of those services is scanning of images.  Here is a link to a pdf that describes their capabilities…
http://www.brandprotect.com/files/BP_Services_Unique_Capabilities.pdf

More research turned up remarks on user agent forums about how this company’s bots ignore the robots.txt file (much like PicScout’s) and that most webmasters just block their domains and IP addresses.  I was able to find out the domains they like to use…

bdbrandprotect.com
brandprotect.com 
brandimensions.net
brandimensions.com

Here are the IP addresses I was able to verify so far….

72.14.164.103
72.14.163.101
72.14.163.107
72.14.170.60
216.183.93.163

And these addresses have been reported as some they have used in the past (could not verify with DNS records other than they are used at the same hosting company)…

72.14.164.122
72.14.164.131
72.14.164.143
72.14.164.157
72.14.164.161
72.14.164.176
72.14.164.183

Tomorrow I will be going over the firewall logs to see if I can spot exactly what kind of traffic and what time they “accessed” my web server.  Now, this may be a legitimate company doing legitimate business, but if they have ways to “bypass” the most basic of web server security settings, then in my opinion, they are no better than hackers and I would refuse to do business with such companies.

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Getty Images Letter Forum / We are the latest victim of the Getty Image extortion scam

« on: November 29, 2012, 01:21:53 PM »

Sorry for not posting sooner, but I have been doing some extensive research since we first got our letter on November 19th claiming an image that is on 229,000+ websites (as of a few days ago) was a copyrighted work and that we pony up $875 (By the way, if they were collecting $875 from every website that was supposedly infringing on this copyright image, they would collect over $200 billion dollars)

I will have to admit, I first went into panic mode when I first received the 14 page letter from Getty Images, but after calming down and finding info about this “scam” and finding the extortionletterinfo.com site, my panic quickly turned into anger on how companies like Getty Images prey upon small business owners, people with blogs, and even nonprofit organizations that have mistaken used an image that supposedly may be copyrighted for a website.

Not only am I angry about companies like Getty Images and their unethical business practices, but I am upset on how the copyright laws are so antiquated and ambiguous that the common person who posts to a forum or blog, or has a webpage can be targeted by companies “trolling” the Internet for profit.

I am on a quest to stop companies like this from preying upon innocent people.  I am currently collecting information on how PicScout, a company acquired by Getty Images in 2009, accesses files on our personally hosted web server.  I have security settings in place to stop spiders and robots from accessing certain files, and from what info I have found, PicScout has a special algorithm to bypass these settings, go to all image folders, and then download these files for comparison in there database.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (Title 18 U.S.C. § 1030) states (a) Whoever-- (2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains—(C) information from a protected computer.   Further definitions of “protected computer” surmise that any computer connected to the Internet is protected.  So by this definition, PicScout has violated the CFAA.

Currently I am reviewing 4 years of firewall logs as every bit of traffic to and from our webserver was logged.  I have the domain names that are used by PicScout and the other “trollers” along with their IP addresses.  Once I review all of the logs and can identify when they accessed the server and caused excessive bandwidth to be used, I will be presenting this information to the state and federal authorities.  I have already filed a claim to our state fraud division and one of our employees is also a state legislator who is putting me in touch with the right people to have this thoroughly looked into.

I will have more to post in a few days once I have done a little more research and compiled some more info.  These trollers messed with the wrong person!