Today, something really strange happened to me, and I wanted to share it with you.
I am doing social media management for a business and today I posted a short video in their social media channels.
A few hours later I received an email by a law firm that our meta account has violated copyright and there should be immediate actions to take place.
I believe that it is a spam, however I did certain actions and I did make a few checks. Has something similar happened to you? I could not find something similar online!
Let me tell you quickly what I did today and why I almost fell for it.
As every time, I posted in almost all social media channels (FB, Insta, X, LinkedIn, TikTok etc)
In all channels a music-free version was posted, but on TikTok, I chose music from the recommended ones.
After that, I downloaded the tiktok video and posted as a trial reel on Instagram.
Trial reels are reels that you can post via Instagram and (may) remain hidden to your followers, while they are being shown to your non-followers. I have been testing this and I will get back with results when I have enough data
The Trial Video did have music, the video was apx 26 seconds and it was also cross-posted in the (meta) threads app.
A few hours ago, I received the email warning me about copyright infringement notice.
The email seems legit, let me show you what else is mentioned.
In the below screenshots, I will share with you all the steps I took to try and verify the information.
I understand that copyright violation can be very serious, and since I was acting on behalf of a legit company I needed to make sure that this was indeed a scam and not a real complaint.
First of all, I have used in the past unauthorized music in Facebook and on TikTok. (without knowing it of course).
What both platforms did, was to mute my posts and not show them to anyone. They also notified me through the platforms. This was the first time that I was served with such a legitimate-like email.
Lets break down all the details..
- Flag 1: Content Type: My content was not commercial advertisement, I only made a normal post.
- Flag 2: Account Id: It was almost correct, by one digit. I dont think that a lawyers firm would make such a mistake.
- Flag 3: A pdf enclosed in the email and not as a file, or with any specific information in the email. Of course I did not open this.
- Flag 4: Sense of urgency
- Flag 5: Who should retain all the records of the (so called) violation?
- Flag 6: I searched the name and could not find such a name working in the specific firm.
- Flag 7: The email that sent me this information was a gmail .. not a law firm email.
My actions were to immediately delete the trial reel and the reel from meta-threads, that was the reel containing the music from tiktok.
Then I started searching for information online and I could not find this as a scam anywhere.
So I would like to have your opinion on this. Have you seen anything similar? Is there anything else I could check?
Thank you in advance for your time!