Prevent my listings photos from being stolen and used to create a fake listing

[Diana677]

My photos were copied and used  by someone on craigslist .  How to avoid this  type scam in the future?

[Anonymous]

@Diana677  One approach would be to add watermarks to your photos identifying them with the URL of your listing. A downside to this would be that the visual appeal of the photos would be degraded, which might be a disadvantage if viewers find a competing listing more seductive.

Another option would be to play the game of whack-a-mole with the scammer, using Reverse Image Search and other tools to find and report the bogus listings. But this means a lot of unpaid work for you, with no real reward.

For what it's worth, most of these scams are targeting guests by leading them to an Airbnb-lookalike page, harvesting their login details, and hijacking their payment methods. There's a similar scam out there that goes as far as to demand a direct money transfer e.g. Western Union. But there's a greater level of risk to you if the impostor has access to your own account information, especially your calendar and keycodes. So this would be a good time to update your passwords and add a new layer of security to your remote access system. 

[Sarah977]

Do report this to Craigslist as a scam listing, if you haven't already. @Diana677