A couple of nights ago, my friend’s friend (Julie) received a random unsolicited email from combinedtours@trips-southamerica.com. Upon opening the message, she saw the following embedded advertisement:
As you can imagine, Julie was very surprised to see a couple of faces she recognized in the image! As was Kara, to whom Julie forwarded the message, and as was I when Kara in turn forwarded it along to me. I was as shocked as she was that Kenny and I were serving as models for a South American travel agency that we had never heard of. But even more baffling was the fact that this random image in a SPAM email from a totally obscure company, who apparently filched my image from Flickr but has no idea who I am, actually made its way back to me.
On another amusing note, the travel package described in the advertisement above includes a trip to the Brazilian side of Iguazu, which offers a panoramic view of the Cataratas, but nothing like the up close and personal experience shown in the photo, which was taken in Argentina.
SERIOUSLY, the most hilarious email ever….
That’s kind of creepy… did you call the travel agency? Can’t you get some sort of royalties for that?
DUDE find a friend who sounds like a lawyer and call these dudes and threaten a lawsuit! The same thing happened to my dad and he got I think 12 grand out of it!
I doubt it’s legal to use something from Flickr for financial gain. You should check their legal jargon.
Although on second thought, they are a foreign company and it might be difficult to negotiate. See if they have a U.S. branch! My dad just got on the phone and had words with an advertising agency in New York who thought he was a chump cause he was from Iowa. But my dad aint no chump. He made them pay.
Well, I thought about contacting them… and yes it is very weird. But honestly, I don’t actually mind, and I find it completely amusing. I bet if I threatened them or asked for money they’d just find some other picture on Flickr to use. :)
Ah true….tough to prove anything if it’s not actually printed. Last week’s episode of Eli Stone taught me that.