A Comment on the Recent UNAUTHORISED Use of My Images

So its been an interesting 24 hours.

Thanks to emails coming in from various sources, I discovered that someone has been using my images.

Not my images of make-up or life in general - but my life in general.

When I got home from work we discovered the extent of what I thought was a small problem. This person had taken images of my life, my friends and my partners and posted them on her twitter pretending this was her.

I am completely horrified to hear about all of this. I do mean horrified. I have taken the steps to find this person and report them. I could post this persons address, email or twitter account but I am not about to do that. I don't want to pour fuel on the fire.

I've been incredibly open about my life and have grown up through this blog which I have been running since I was roughly about 23. I am now almost 30 and I have detailed my life through stories, images and social media as far as I can remember. I've had good experiences and now, a really bad one. I don't want to stop posting because I don't think that is fair on me. I've worked hard to build up trust and a good name with my readers. I am impressed that so many of them contacted me to tell me what was happening.

Luckily, one of the girls took photos of all the twitter posts which included not only photos of me, but photos of her as well. The worse part was that not all the images came from my blog but also, my facebook account (which should be set to private and I am going to be contacting facebook about the matter as my account is private) I am seriously angry about the whole affair and I really am even more angry about the people who were contacted by this person.

If you were, or saw a suspect account using a different name but my photos, please let me know. I've had a few emails through in 24 hours to tell me about the contact this person has had and the sick things this individual said.

I guess some measures will have to be taken and some things dealt with in the next week. Monday is now going to be spent tightening up security on my social media. Which is a shame because everything is already set to as private as you can get. So this isn't going to be easy.

I have never claimed to own images on this blog apart from the ones of myself. I don't mind if someone wants to take a picture of a lipstick and use it to talk about said lipstick. I do mind when my personal image is taken and someone pretends to look like me. I cannot imagine how someone would need to be that sad to do that. My images of me are something I already don't like doing before this but I do it because it brings a personal touch to the blog and sometimes I am really excited to show you something I am wearing or have done with my make-up. Now, this openness and naivety on my behalf are being used against me.

I understand trolls and horrible emails because hidden in amongst the nice emails about make-up, dresses or coeliac support emails are really horrible ones which are sexual in nature, threatening and just plain weird, like the guy who messaged me about pornography used by serial killers. Thanks for that one. Bad emails and weird people are a side effect of the internet and being out there. I normally sigh and hit delete. This is a step above all of that and could have very dangerous side effects and is effectively, identity fraud. Something I believe I can actually report this person for and is taken very seriously.

So thank you to all the readers who got in touch about it. I am on it and have reported and intend on reporting even more. Thank you to my friends who helped me gather information on this and I am planning on an overhaul of how we do business on this site.

I really shouldn't have to - but hey....that's the sad fact of being out in the open in this day and age.