I Was Duped By An Artpal Spammer

I had the same email, but luckily I saw the email from FAA first.

I also had the same email but I never open ones I am not sure about - I right click and go to view message source to check it out first and if still not sure it goes to junk!

at least you are getting e mail from faa! SOOOO many of us are no longer receiving anything from faa....

There is a simple method to avoid spam like this that easily catches a large majority of them. Simply look at the sending domain.

If an email from PayPal, Amazon - or ArtPal - comes from a domain other than paypal.com, amazon.com or artpal,com, it's a dead giveaway to me that it's probably not legit. Yes, spoofing can circumvent that but that's much harder to do nowadays.

A good example is those "we attempted to deliver a package" scams. If FedEx attempted a delivery, their email would come from fedex.com, not YouAreAnIdiotIfYouClickThis@ru.com.

The ArtPal email did not come from artpal.com. It came from gmail. A dead giveaway and it was deleted long before I read the FAA warning.

a great reminder Dan

I got spammed from Artpal too, but like Dan I saw it was shady.

For me, any "organization" legit or not, that tries to solicit me here or on any other site in such a way automatically gets deleted. I would never hook up with a place that spams. If I want another place to sell my work, I will search and find one myself.

I appreciate the system here at FAA that makes it tougher for this to happen and the fact that FAA sent a follow up letter to apologize and warn me that a spammer slipped through the cracks.

yes, I got an email from the spammer, luckily I sleep in this morning however I never do anything until I check it out first. Thanks for the alert from FAA!

Thanks for your responses. I called PayPal and they said not to worry, as I didn't give out my password. Live and learn! lol

........ FAA sent a follow up letter to apologize and warn me that a spammer slipped through the cracks. ???

I didn't get that.

I got the ArtPal email just fine though.

Hi Venice. You're not alone. I don't know what happened to me today, but I fell for this very obvious scam. It was shady from the start, as the guys above explained, especially Dan. I always look at those details. I receive fake paypal emails weekly and I wasn't dying to joining another art site anyway, so I've no idea why I rushed and uploaded my work in artpal. Maybe I was possessed by a demon or something.
Anyway, I immediately deleted the whole thing after reading the FAA email and waking up to my sudden stupidity. I noticed how obviously fake that ArtPal site was. But the idea that I uploaded hi-res artwork there makes me feel terrible.
Luckily I didn't enter my paypal password, nor I saw any demands on doing so.
Do you guys think that the scam consisted into hacking paypal accounts?

I got both emails.

Got the spam, but not the email from FAA telling me it was. I checked out the site, read a few "articles" on the site about marketing, online versus gallery sales, etc. I then "Googled" for more information about "ArtPal."....everything had the look of legitimacy......but I just kept having that nagging feeling of weirdness. So, I came here for more info. Consequently, I have passed on their freebie offer.

I still don't trust this outfit, even though I received the following email after I wrote, asking the to cancel my account....

"Hi,

Thank you for the email. To answer your main question, you can cancel anytime by going to your gallery, click “Settings”, then change your Gallery Status to “Delete”.

To ease your concerns, I assure you ArtPal is a legitimate gallery representing several thousand high-quality artists (as you can see on the site), and is not stealing email addresses, nor has any reason to. We’ve heard from other member’s this morning that there are some scary things being said by a competitor, so it makes sense that some people are concerned. I assure you there is nothing to be worried about. ArtPal is a very fast growing gallery loved by many artists and art buyers, and I do hope you’ll stay.

Please let me know if you have any further concerns.

Regards,

Daniel"

I got the email too, but I have already been on their site for about 6 months or so…I don't know if it spam, but now I am suspicious..I posted my images their but have had no sales. I think they are just trying to get artist from anywhere possible.

ArtPal is 100% responsible for all of the spam e-mails that everyone received. There is no doubt about it.

We have a full audit trail of everything that they've done. They created fake accounts on FAA back in October 2013. They sent test e-mails to themselves to make sure that their scam would work, and then they started spamming all of the members.

They even set up a page on their site to specifically badmouth FAA:

http://www.ArtPal.com/faa

We have everything. We have their IP addresses. We have their e-mail address. We have the date, time, and content of every single e-mail that they sent. We have screen captures of the URL, above.

The fact that they created a URL specifically for FAA members... right before spamming those same members with that URL... is pretty unbelievable. It directly implicates the owners of the site as the source of the spam.

Sean

its not that you were duped, they are a real site, but just really underhanded and shifty.

---Mike Savad

I agree with Mike. I got an email from Doug over at Artpal and he claims that he had no knowledge per sea ,,but I am not really concerned with that..The bad mouthing is not really bad mouthing just a comparison of one site to another. I think you need to look at it another way..ITs a Huge Compliment to you and to FAA. They are jealous of you success. They are a little fish in a big pond and will try what ever means possible to poach customers and artists.. I saw it first hand with a colleague of mine and her Facebook page.. Someone started to poach artists from her page and steal her idea. Boy did she get angry about it.. BUt it was nonsensical too at the same time. She had 10,000 artists when I left and last time I looked , she was up to 20,000.

and I've got an e-mail from Linda with a long list of numbers after her name...and it was all like "ArtPal is doing everything like FAA does just for free"...yeah right...what is sad about it that the "bad words"once spread are hard to delete...anyways I believe that strong position of FAA is safe...

No body "loves" me - I got no emails. darn!!!

A bit confused I looked at the page and didn't notice any badmouthing. It appeared to be a comparison of the two places.

Don't feel bad Roy I haven't received my email yet either.

I just typed in artpal.com and faa is mentioned there, so I don't see how it is a special url just for us.

I found it being rather tacky and unethical right off the bat getting an email from a competitor using another company's email system which was enough for me to flush it rather quickly.

Marlene: If you've ever visited the FAA-specific link (artpal.com/faa) then they set a cookie on your system (with a 6 month expiry) so that even if you type in artpal.com and just click on 'sell art', it remembers you are an FAA member and shows you the comparison:



If you visit it on a clean browser, in incognito/private browsing mode, or on a different system, it doesn't (at least for me) mention FAA:

I got the spam, not the FAA rebuttal. Oh well. I'm on enough sites already, so I wouldn't have bothered, legit or not.

I don't see any important reasons to use their service - i.e. any mention of having any buyers.

Competitors can come and go with similar or fancier features or perhaps even a smoother running site but they still need to deliver buyers.

I didn't get any warning from FAA

Maybe I'll look into this Artpal site...

J L,

That's because you didn't receive the spam e-mail, either.

Sean

I got the spam email and the warning from FAA (thank you).

I think if you clicked on their link your email was stolen from that point.. FAA said do not click on any of their links.

i'm a bit disappointed i wasn't spammed directly, i had to get my spam second hand by someone else....


---Mike Savad

there should be a mechanism in place that prevents a new person from making any more than 5 mails a day. someone new would never need to send more than that. this should cut the spam down quickly for the future.


---Mike Savad

good idea or have them fill in a number code for each email they send.

Richard, it is set to fill in a number code when you go to someones page and click "contact" (the tiny envelope) to send a message, not when sending a private message. Sean mentioned that he uses this as protection.

ah thanks Barbara, I never sent a message here or if I did it was a looong time ago and just plain forgot. lol

I don't recall getting and email from FAA about them, but got an email from ArtPal today and "reported" them to FAA. Glad I didn't join from the sounds of it.

Donna,

Was the e-mail sent to you directly from ArtPal, or was it sent to you from FAA (donotreply- at - fineartamerica.com) on behalf of ArtPal?

Can you post the content of the message here?

Sean

I, too got the Artpal email but never got one from FAA.

Thank you FAA/Sean for the warning. :)

I got the email from a visitor on FAA named Linda. I never open anything from any visitor.

A spammer is someone who "fools" you. This looks like just a case of competitive, may a little shady, business practice. The question is: has anybody sold thru art pal? get their money? paypal work correctly? If so, not really spam.

Show me the money!

Results is what wins my loyalty. Right now a site would have to actively promote my work to attract my attention.