Scamming The Scammers: How To Deal With Ambiguous Spam

My friend Adam is a professional illustrator and has been fending off spam emails like these for most of his professional life:

Now these are obviously scams, and like most of us Adam typically deletes them or sends them to his junk mail folder. But lately they've been getting more sophisticated and harder to spot, and Adam is concerned that more artists like himself may fall for them. Is there anything we can do to fight back?

I don't know how many artists fall for these types of schemes; I like to think most people are savvy enough to see through phishing attempts like this. But if the scams are getting better, they're more likely to convince someone to give up sensitive personal data. In today's political climate no one is looking out for artists. There’s a patchwork of federal and state laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 that ostensibly address commercial spam, unlawful solicitation, pornography, and various forms of computer crimes, but these laws are incomplete and often ineffective. The CAN-SPAM Act, which prohibits many types of commercial spam (but permits many others) itself has largely gone unenforced.

So if you wanted to take matters into your own hands, how could you do it? You could:

1. Report the spammers to a law enforcement agency;
2. Contact Anonymous or other white hat hacking groups;
3. Sue them if you can figure out who they are; or
4. Meet the scammers on their home turf and spam 'em right back.

Any of these options would feel satisfying. Turning the tables on your opponent usually is. But without money, time, or cyber-security know-how, most of these probably aren't all that realistic. And as for law enforcement, well as I said above, there's not much incentive these days to pursue Nigerian Prince-like schemes. There's another problem too. These spammers are a dime a dozen. Even if you successfully take one out, several more will spring up like a hydra. And let's not forget that many of them are attacking you from countries like Russia, China, and North Korea. Not exactly places where the U.S. has political capital.

The reality is that the best tool for fighting back against unwanted spam is education. It’s banal and not very satisfying for the vengeance-minded, but it does work… kind of how like comprehensive sex education contributes to lower teen pregnancy rates. So if one of these emails makes it through your spam filter and into your inbox, what should you look out for?

Poor Grammar and Spelling. Not every prospective buyer writes English well, but the wonky grammar in these emails tend to be a dead giveaway that you’re reading something written by a bot and not a person. Some of these emails can be well-written though, so be extra vigilant about that.

Lack of Specificity. Spam emails like the ones above tend to have few details about the buyer and demonstrate little or no knowledge of you and your work. You may get some generic compliments or odd bits of personal information designed to throw you off the scent, like “I saw my wife looking at your website” or “I’m moving to Australia.” But spam tends to largely be devoid of specificity and humanity.

Lack of Common Sense. These emails tend to ask for information that is easily and readily available and takes little common sense to find. As you can see, all three emails above ask Adam for information about purchasing his art... information that’s available on his website, which is easily Googleable. If this person had done enough investigating to find his email address, they certainly would have found his website. Oftentimes, they’ll offer to buy a work without asking the price or how to properly ship the work.

Bad or Incomplete Contact Information. Spam and phishing emails often give strange looking or contradictory email addresses. They rarely provide mailing addresses or phone numbers. In the event they do, the address is often an international one and/or improperly organized (like forgetting to put a state or zip code) and the phone numbers often have an incorrect number of digits or are international numbers. 

Questionable Payment Options. Spammers are usually trying to get personal identifying information or access to your bank or credit accounts. They may ask for your PayPal account or bank information. Periodically, as in the emails above, they’ll offer personal checks or cashiers checks. The offer of a cashiers or bank check is especially curious as those checks are conventionally understood to be backed by a bank. If it’s a bank you’ve never heard of, do some research and find out if it’s legit. 

There are some other things you can look out for as well. It should be said that even if the email contains some of these issues, the buyer could be real, so do some digging - find out who this person is - and use your common sense.

Under no circumstances should you EVER ship the work to the buyer until A) you’re confident it’s a real person and B) payment clears. And if there’s any doubt, just send it right into your junk mail folder and don’t give it a second thought. You’re too busy to spend your time trying to figure out if a buyer is a real person who wants to buy your work.

Dear Artists, Don’t Stick Your Head In The Sand

Imagine one day you decide to start a podcast. You're very excited about your new venture and spend countless hours researching topics, writing copy and setting up your recording booth just so. But you know that if you want people to listen, it needs to be entertaining, and 45 minutes of you talking into a microphone won’t be. It's got to be a real multimedia experience; that's the difference between entertainment and lecture. Among other things, you'll need music, maybe some sound effects, and even archival audio material to spice things up. 

So where do you find those things? And when you find them, do you properly attribute them? Do you request permission to use them and pay a fair licensing fee? If there’s something specific you want, do you make a good faith effort to find the owner, or do you just take it? If you don’ have satisfactory answers to these questions, you may want to rethink your strategy before you hit "publish."

One hallmark of being an artist is excitement about your latest work and a strong desire to get it out into the world. You want people to see it, to comment on it, and hopefully, to enjoy it. Any artist who claims otherwise is lying - to you or themselves. It's easy in that situation to get tunnel vision and let caution fall by the wayside. When momentum is on your side, why get bogged down in administrative matters?

I understand that impulse as much as anyone. I've been an artist (I like to think I still am) and I see it with my clients.  But I want to take this space to urge you, dear artists, not to stick your head in the sand and assume no one will care about those administrative matters. Even if you don’t, I promise you someone else does. I’ve long advocated on this blog for sweating the business stuff because being an artist these days means being a business owner - whether or not its formalized and even if it's not a primary means of income. Using the copyrighted work of another without permission puts you and your business in jeopardy. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but eventually someone is going to notice, and they're not going to accept "I didn't know" as a reasonable excuse.

It's tempting to pin your hopes on fair use, but the problem with fair use is that to prove you’re covered by it, you need to defend yourself, which almost certainly means thousands of dollars in legal costs. Some courts view fair use as a right, while others view it merely as a defense (which means you can't assert fair use until AFTER you've been sued), but practically speaking, the only way to know for sure whether fair use applies is for the litigation to play out. Just saying the words "fair use" is no more a shield against litigation than yelling "I declare bankruptcy" a way of erasing debt.

We live in a litigious society. And IP holders, especially large corporate ones, have no compunction about hailing little guys into court over minor infractions. Defending yourself will take money you don’t have, and months or years out of your life. Sometimes, companies go bankrupt simply defending themselves in court. I can assure you that even if you win, it’s not worth it.

Which means - let’s say it together - you have to sweat the business stuff. You need to have things like contracts, bills of sale, release forms, licensing agreements, and business bank accounts. It means you probably have to incorporate your business. It means you can’t rely on fair use unless a lawyer tells you it’s okay. It means you have to ask permission to use work you didn’t develop. There’s a lot more to it than that, but you get the gist.

Don’t stick your head in the sand, hoping that ignorance will save you. Pay attention to the administrative matters. Build it into your schedule and workflow. If you hate doing it (welcome to the club), have a friend or spouse or family member help you. I’m not trying to rain on your parade. I’m here to tell you the rain is coming one way or another. I just want to make sure you have an umbrella.