Doing business on the web brings a whole new set of issues that we would prefer not to have to deal with in the antiques and fine art business. We had a problem a few years ago when a predatory internet company created a mirror of our web site and was making money by redirecting our visitors to other sites where they could buy $12.00 clocks and junk furniture. It took an attorney to fix that problem.
We have at various times, discovered images of our merchandise in use on other sites, without our permission. I certainly don’t mind our images being used for scholarly purposes, as long as we are credited. It is well known that images are frequently stolen off of Ebay and used by scammers pretending to be offering those items for sale.
Now another group has hijacked several images from our inventory and as of today, are “offering” those items for sale on 3 different bogus websites. I will include the web addresses of the offending sites here in the hopes that anyone considering making a purchase from one of them will search the internet for background information and discover the scam. louismeuble.com is one site. friendsfromistanbul.com is another and the third is lustercoins.com. Beware of these web sites!
We have prided ourselves in offering the best possible, professional images on our web site. Unfortunately, we will be looking at water marking all of the images, which is not only a distraction, but a it creates more work. We are all constantly annoyed by email spam and occasionally you hear of a friend having their account hacked. This behavior is too easily perpetrated and it flies under the radar of our law enforcement. I think the world needs some internet police.