Microstock Junction: Keeping Microstock Accounts Secure

Microstock Junction

Shooting Stock... and Other Things

Microstock Junction: Keeping Microstock Accounts Secure

Keeping Microstock Accounts Secure

You wear your seatbelt while you drive your car and your helmet when you ride your bike, but what are you doing to protect yourself while navigating the microstock arena?

Recently an established microstock photographer announced on the Talkmicro forum that his Fotolia and StockXpert accounts had been hijacked and emptied. He knew very quickly that something was amiss and contacted both agencies. StockXpert stopped the transfer of funds to a MoneyBookers account, while Fotolia had found his credits converted to purchase photos. It's unclear what led up to the hijack. The photographer works in IT and is confident that his spy sweeping and antivirus was secure.

Your choice of passwords is one of the most important steps in protecting your on-line presence. A strong password has a combination of upper and lowercase letters and numbers. Sure, the easiest password in the universe is “password”, but change it to “PASSword” and it is suddenly a little trickier. Change it to 1PASS2word3 and it is quite strong. I don’t happen to have a vault for a memory, so I find it necessary to keep a cheat-sheet of all my many passwords. Another microstock contributor mentioned that he uses a unique agency code trailed by a similar combination of letters and numbers on each different site.

If you are a PayPal user, it is doubly important to have a unique password, and you may even go so far as to have an e-mail address that is devoted just to PayPal.

Many microstock contributors sell photos under a different user name between the different agencies. There are several reasons to do the this, but when it comes to account security, it can be one additional step of protection. You are not anonymous as a contributor – but you will be a little more difficult to locate on the various sites with a different user name.

You must also decide if it is worth the risk to check your accounts while you are traveling. Public computers found in libraries and hotel lobbies are notorious for keystroke stealing infections. If you do feel that you are on a secure computer, remember to log out of your account before exiting the browser. Your account may remain “open” for anyone to enter until you log back on from another computer.

A final consideration may be when and how you transfer your money. On October 29 I ran a poll on microstockgroup.com to see how often other microstockers collected their earnings.

Out of 54 polled:

19 collected their earnings as soon as they became available
15 collected their earnings at the end of each month
12 collected their earnings at regular weekly or bi-weekly intervals
8 collected infrequently, and only when they needed it

The contributor who was hacked at Fotolia and StockXpert suggested that others consider cashing out their earnings more frequently. That way, if their account ever falls victim to a theft, the loss will be smaller than at the end of the month when accumulated earnings are much higher. In the past I always treated my earnings as a payroll, but going forward, I will begin collecting earnings as they come available.