How to Avoid Online Art Scammers Targeting You & Your Work!
FROM ILLINOIS ARTISTS' LIST
As an artist, having an online art presence is essential — not just for selling work, but for creating relationships with other artists, clients, and partners that will benefit your art career.
It’s important to be online, but with more of our careers happening on our phones and laptops, our accounts have also become an attractive place for criminals. Between scams, phishing, art image theft, computer viruses, trolls, and fraud, there are a number of potentially dangerous traps to watch out for as you bring more of your art career online.
Recognize art scams
Have you ever received an inquiry about your artwork that seemed a little bit off? Be wary when it comes to new buyers you don't know.
There are a few tell-tale signs of an art scam. Before replying to an email, check for these scam red flags.
Are there misspellings or strange grammar? Oftentimes a scam is being thrown together without care, you’ll notice sentences that don’t make sense and other errors.
Does the inquiry immediately try to facilitate a sale? When a genuine, non-scammer, buyer reaches out about your artwork they will likely have questions about the work, about you as an artist, and may want to see more images of the work before even bringing up the details around purchasing your artwork. A scam message is always trying to create the quickest possible transfer of money or personal information.
Is there an unnecessarily complicated story within the message? Sometimes scam messages will bombard you with too much information. This TMI tactic is intended to either confuse you, elicit some type of emotional response, or to rationalize requests about money orders or refunds in the email.
Does the sender want you to cash a check for them or send them any funds? A real art buyer will not ask you to cash a check or ask you to send them money. Scammers will entice artists by saying that they will pay more than the art price listed but would like to be refunded for the difference. If it feels fishy, it is!
Always google the name of your buyer and confirm that they are a real person. You can google the text of a message sent to you to see if other people have received similar messages.
Just assume that any email you receive is a possible scammer. Never click any links in an email sent to you unless you initiated the process directly with the associated website.
Good luck and always be cautious!
