In 2015 a client asked me to remove an image from my site, and I immediately complied. So I was surprised and embarrassed when I received a phone call last week from the same client asking me to again remove the image. I was sure I had done so. Upon checking, the image was definitely not displayed on my site or on any of my social networks.

As it turns out the image was showing up on Google when searching for the client’s name. Clicking the image in Google’s search result revealed the location of the image.

It turns out someone had added the image to Pinterest.

Four Simple Steps To Get Pinterest To Remove An Image

I could have used the title “How To Remove An Image From Pinterest”, which is simple enough when you’re the original person to pin an image to one of your own boards on Pinterest.  However, I’ve learned over the past week it’s quite a different issue when you’re attempting to remove an image from another user’s Pinterest Board. 

Steps To Get Pinterest To Remove An Image

Step 1:  Contact The Pinterest User Directly

Start by attempting to contact the Pinterest user who has posted the photo.  This will be your best starting point if only one or a small number of users have pinned the image.

Clicking an individual image on Pinterest will reveal not only who pinned the image, but what board they pinned the image on.

Next, click the Pinterest User Name to view their homepage showing you all of their boards.  More importantly you’ll then find the ability to “message” the user directly.  Going this route you will soon discover you’re contacting the user through an internal messaging system and not through email or the like.

In my case I did not get a response.

Step 2:  Look Through The User’s Boards

The username of the individual who pinned my image was AA Photo.  (not really AA)

When a user posts an image on Pinterest, a link can be created which will take you back to the original webpage where the image was taken from.

As a professional photographer I watermark my images with my signature and url.  

My hope was to find the photographer had posted one of their own watermarked images which would take me to their studio website, thus giving me a more direct way to contact the individual.  I began looking through every image  AA Photo had pinned in hopes of finding a watermark on one of the images which correlated to AA Photo.  

My search was fruitless, and I began to think AA Photo was possibly not a professional photographer.

Step 3:  Contact Pinterest Directly

The existence of Pinterest is based upon displaying images, and as you will learn there’s an easy way to request an image be removed which you did not add to the site yourself.  However, finding this method to submit your takedown request requires a bit of digging.

Personally, reading the main options on the Pinterest Help Page was a waste of time…. until you look in the footer.  There I found a section called Our Policies with a sub category of Copyright & Trademark.

The Pinterest Copyright Page provides you with four ways to contact Pinterest about removing an image, none of which provide the ability to speak to a live person.  (sigh)

Step 4:  How To Submit a DMCA Takedown Notice To Pinterest

The first sentence on the Pinterest Copyright Page states, “Pinterest respects the intellectual property rights of others and we expect people on Pinterest to do the same.”  I for one, after my own personal experience believe them.  They responded quickly to my request and removed my copyrighted work as they said they would.  

Pinterest gives you four options to contact them to remove an image.  All four options require submitting an official DMCA Take Down Notice.  

What Pinterest is essentially saying is they will only entertain image removal requests from the image copyright owner.  So, if you’re trying to get an image removed, and you did not take the image, you will need to contact the creator of the copyrighted work and have them submit the DMCA Takedown Notice.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, is a 1998 United States copyright law.  A DMCA Takedown Request is a tool used by copyright owners.  Here are some copyright facts and misconceptions. 

The four methods to submit an official DMCA Take Down Request to Pinterest:

1. Fill out an online form
2. Email your request
3. Fax your request
4. Mail in your request

The simplest of these is to use their online form, and ultimately this is what worked for my situation. 

The Pinterest DMCA Takedown Notice Form

The online Pinterest DMCA Takedown Notice Form is called their Copyright Infringement Notification form.  It’s the simplest way of submitting your request.

It’s pretty straight forward.  I filled it out and submitted the form.  

Immediately after clicking the Submit Button you are presented with a pop-up window displaying a confirmation number.  Take a screen shot for your records.  You may also want to change your browser’s preferences to not block pop-up windows to ensure you see your confirmation number.

Twenty four hours after I submitted the form I received an email stating the image had been removed.  Also contained in the email was  DMCA Notification Number.

Yes!  

Unfortunately though, the story did not end here for me, and more importantly for my client.

The Image was still showing up in Google search results!

Upon inspection the image had definitely been removed from AA Photo’s Pinterest Board, and I was lucky this was the only user who had pinned the image.  

I once again searched my customer’s name on Google only to find the image was still being seen in the search results.  

I decided to wait a day or two to see if the image would drop from the search results once Google saw the image was no longer in existence.  

I grew impatient, and with a little research found Google provides a way to remove deleted images from search results using their Remove Outdated Content page.

Within four hours after filling out the form, Google was saying the image was removed.

Yes!  Again, I felt I had accomplished my mission.

To my frustration, the image was still showing up in Google search results.   

Hovering my mouse over the image in the search results showed the address of the image on Pinterest.  In fact, when I clicked on the image I am taken to Pinterest, and the image was not found.  It appeared as if the image was gone, but Google search results were telling me it wasn’t.

After a bit of research I learned to right click on the image in the search results and look for the option to “Copy Image Address”.  Paste that address in a text editor and you’ll find a different url!  Visit the url in a browser and your image will appear on a white page.

What you are likely to find is a url similar to https://i.pinimg.com.  

It turns out https://ipinimg.com is possibly the main Pinterest Image Server.  

I discovered I had successfully removed my copyrighted image from AA Poto’s Board, however the image still remained on the Pinterest Server, and Google was referencing it in search results when searching for my client’s name.  

I once again submitted my DMCA Takedown Notice through the online Pinterest DMCA Takedown Notice Form using the new i.pinimg.com url as a reference, and 24 hours later the additional copy of the image had been removed as well.

My next step was to again fill out Google’s Remove Outdated Content page.

A few short hours later Google confirmed the image’s removal from search results.  Checking myself, I found the image had indeed been removed from search results which I was then happy to report to my client.

Perhaps your situation and response time from filling out Pinterest’s online form is different and you need to write and send in your own DMCA Takedown Notice to Pinterest. 

Pinterest DMCA Takedown Notice Addresses

Pinterest Copyright Agent
808 Brannan Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-4904

Fax:  +1 415 762 7100

Email:  copyright@pinterest.com

Stay tuned to the blog as I will soon discuss how to create and submit your own written DMCA Takedown Notice to Pinterest, or any other entity for that matter.