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So I was quickly skimming my junk email box before dumping it, in case buried between the “We have $20,000,000 in Nigeria for you” and the “You too can become a secret shopper” emails was something of importance, and I came across this email, about how I should buy a domain name and “get on line.” OK.
But it had a hot girl in the image. Check it out:
So then I started thinking – how many emails have photos of people in them? Then I asked myself the question – where do these people come from? How do the images wind up in Spam?
I went to graduate school for photography, if you can believe it. I know that the model release you need to get signed in order to publish someone for non-editorial work is pretty clear – and I’m betting the spammers don’t do model releases.
OK, so maybe they buy the photos from a stock agency.
If that’s the case, are stock photo agencies willingly selling to spammers?
Wouldn’t it be fun if we somehow were able to figure out how to track down the people in the photos and just start bothering them directly? Saying things like, “Hey, you might want to tell your stock agency to stop selling your photo to known spammers.”
Granted, I don’t recommend doing this, because I’m sure the models have no idea where their photo winds up, but still – can you imagine dating this woman?
“This is my girlfriend, Michelle. She’s a Spam model!”
Heh.