With more artists moving online to gain access to millions of customers worldwide, new scams are emerging targeting their online stores and artwork. Here are some of the most common art scams to watch out for and what you can do about them.
Payment for promotion scams can take the form of scam art promotion pages offering likes and features for payment, or art contests that encourage participation for a fee.
How to spot a fake art promotion page:
- High follower count with much lower likes on posts.
- Comments on posts are from other art promotion pages or seem spammy and unrelated.
- The page bio doesn’t add up or includes a list of hashtags to other promotion pages.
- Links in the page’s bio direct to a website selling unrelated products or subscriptions.
Art promotion scams in emails & DMs:
- Open with a generic copy/paste message: “Hi, I’m [fictitious name] and I would love to promote your art in our for [fee]”.
- You spot several spelling and grammatical mistakes in the content.
- Links in the content direct to a website selling something or requesting payment or personal information.
Before participating in promotion pages, scroll through the comments and likes to get a sense of the page’s legitimacy and search for information on the account name to surface any prior complaints. If the promotion offer is via email, look up the website’s domain name and scan the message for red flags in the content.
Promoting via third party apps and accounts has its advantages; although, growing your account organically and promoting your artwork direct is more secure and gives you control over your copyright — promote your Instagram posts through your account by following these steps.
This is a surprisingly prevalent tactic where scammers claim they’ve overpaid the amount of an item by mistake and placed the payment on hold, so the seller can refund them the overpaid amount before they release the payment. Once the seller sends the money via a digital wallet (PayPal, Stripe, Venmo), they discover the transaction was a scam. In some cases the item has already shipped, so the seller loses their item, amount, and their personal payment information is at risk.
You can prevent this scam by cancelling the transaction if you suspect something is wrong or by requesting the buyer to cancel the transaction from their side.
Spam bots are all over social media, and chances are that you’ve already seen these annoying spam comments pop up on your page, attempting to filter viewers back to a scam website. Fortunately, you can get rid of these comments by holding them for moderation (if you’re using WordPress or a similar platform). For comment moderation on Facebook, see here.
Since many artists use Instagram to promote their work, here is a step-by-step guide on how you can use the Advanced comment filtering tool to prevent spam comments from appearing in your comment section:
Step 1
Go to → Settings→ Privacy → Hidden words → Custom Words and Phrases → then click on → View List
Step 2
Add the words or phrases in the spam comment that appeared on your post. For example, if the comment said “send pic to be featured” from a spammy art promotion page, take the words “send pic” and add them to your list. This will prevent the comment from appearing again.
Below, a screenshot of some words I’ve used to stop comments from spam art pages.
It’s always exciting to hear from people interested in purchasing an item from your store; however, if the buyer is attempting to direct you away from the regular modes of payment to pay by cheque or money wire, you should steer clear of the transaction. Scammers always try to redirect buyers and website owners away from regular modes of payment to fake links and money wire services where they can quickly gain access to personal financial information.
Selling your art online opens up endless opportunities to share your artwork and expand your customer base, but online sellers need to be aware that scammers are always on the lookout to exploit customers and site owners. Here are some practical steps you can take to ensure the safety of your work and data online:
- Use a strong admin login password for your website: a combination of at least eight upper and lower case characters and numbers. Better yet, use two-factor authentication, which adds an additional layer of security by asking you to validate your login via an application, email, or biometric fingerprint authentication on your phone.
- Add a watermark to your images to copyright your digital assets.
- Add an SSL certificate to your site (SSL stands for secure sockets layer and encrypts information to protect data; it also displays information about the website in the padlock icon next to the URL). Most website builders include an SSL certificate for free, and some hosting providers offer them as an extra service for an annual fee.
4. If you sense there is something wrong with an online transaction, don’t hesitate to decline the buyer’s request, especially if it’s outside the regular modes of payment.
5. Never share your personal or financial details with anyone online.
6. Avoid third-party apps and pages when sharing your work and promote your content direct from your account.
