If you've invested in good product photography, there's a decent chance someone is using your images without permission. Scammers scrape product photos for fake stores. Competitors grab them for their own listings. Dropshippers pull them straight from your site and slap them on AliExpress storefronts.
According to image rights agency Copytrack, around 85% of images shared online are used without a valid license. Most creators never even know it happened.
The good news: finding stolen images isn't hard. It just takes a bit of know-how and some free tools.
Why Your Product Photos Get Stolen
Your product images are valuable for the same reasons you created them in the first place:
They're expensive to make. Good product photography takes time, equipment, and often a professional photographer. Thieves skip all of that by taking yours.
They're already optimized to sell. You've done the work of styling, lighting, and editing. Your photos are proven to convert—that's exactly what makes them worth stealing.
Most merchants never check. The vast majority of store owners don't monitor for image theft, so there's little risk of getting caught.
If your store has any traction at all, your images are a target.
How to Find Stolen Images (Manually)
There are a few free tools that let you search the web for copies of your images. Each one indexes different parts of the internet, so it's worth using more than one.
Google Reverse Image Search
The most accessible option. Go to images.google.com, click the camera icon, and either upload your image or paste its URL. Google will show you visually similar images and pages where your image appears.
Tips:
- Search your best-selling products first—they're the most likely to be stolen
- Try cropped versions of your images (sometimes thieves crop out watermarks or backgrounds)
- Click through to "Find image source" for more detailed results
TinEye
TinEye is built specifically for reverse image search. It's been around longer than Google's version and sometimes catches older or more obscure uses of your images.
TinEye also lets you sort results by "oldest" or "most changed"—useful for tracking down the original thief or finding modified versions of your photos.
Yandex
This one's a bit of a secret weapon. Yandex is a Russian search engine, and its image search often surfaces results that Google misses—especially from non-US websites, which is where a lot of counterfeit stores operate.
Same process: upload your image or paste a URL, and see what comes back.
A Simple Routine
You don't need to search every image you have. Start with:
- Your 5-10 best-selling products
- Any hero images from your homepage or ads
- Unique lifestyle shots that would be hard to replicate
Check these every month or two. If you find one instance of theft, search for your other images too—thieves rarely stop at one.
What to Do When You Find a Stolen Image
Once you've confirmed someone is using your image without permission, you have a few options.
Document it first. Screenshot the page, save the URL, note the date. You'll need this if you escalate.
Send a cease and desist. A simple email to the site owner asking them to remove the image works more often than you'd think. Many people don't realize (or pretend not to realize) that what they're doing is infringement.
File a DMCA takedown. If they ignore you—or if there's no way to contact them—go straight to the hosting provider or platform. Most hosts have an abuse contact or DMCA form. Marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay all have IP infringement reporting processes.
Report to the platform. If the stolen image is on social media, use the platform's built-in copyright reporting. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all have these.
For a full walkthrough on takedowns, check out our guide: What to Do When Someone Copies Your Shopify Store.
Why Manual Searches Don't Scale
The process above works, but it has limits.
If you have dozens or hundreds of products, manually searching for each one is a time sink. And even if you do it religiously, you're only catching what's indexed at the moment you search. A new infringing site could pop up the day after you check.
The bigger your catalog—and the more successful your store—the harder it gets to stay on top of this manually.
Automating Image Monitoring
If you want ongoing protection without the manual work, you need a tool that continuously scans for your images across the web.
StoreLock does this automatically. It monitors for your product images appearing on other sites and alerts you when something shows up. You can review matches from your dashboard and send takedown requests without hunting down hosting providers yourself.
It's not the only option out there, but it's built specifically for Shopify merchants dealing with this problem.
Protect your brand with StoreLock
StoreLock monitors for counterfeit sites impersonating your store and alerts you when your images show up somewhere they shouldn't. Catch copycats early and send takedowns without leaving Shopify.
