ATTENTION USERS OF NEWGROUNDS

READ THIS POST CAREFULLY

Do not panic and stay calm

It has come to my attention that several users on Newgrounds and a few other websites have had their artwork stolen thanks to this thread that has been made on the Art Forum of the BBS thanks to @Prismisho and @Hexamak. Some of the artwork in question has also been some of my own. Upon further investigation, there has been many more developments that have come to light regarding ArtWishers.

Scam Adviser's verdict is that ArtWishers is fraudulent and attempts to scam people out of their money.

Do not attempt to buy anything from this website.

Remember your web smarts: Do not give out any personal information such as emails or credit card information to sites that are not reputable.

That being said, I do have to own up to adding to an otherwise chaotic situation since I have not anticipated what the intent behind the owners of ArtWishers may have been when this news first broke out, given the site is using a search engine based on google to steal people's artwork it is safe to assume that it likely will do with everyone who uses since it's likely a scare tactic.

If you have not already visited the site then please do not attempt to go looking for the website. Instead, just report it as a scam to the following places below. It will feed into the algorithm.

If you have already visited the site and intend to send a DCMA Complaint,

then DO NOT SEND AN EMAIL THROUGH THE SITE ITSELF.

Doing so will not only prompt the owners of the site to block your IP address. Additionally, you will be giving them your personal information since these people are likely not selling your art as much as they are intending to steal people's money and other important information.

Please send the complaints to the following parties:

DNS PROVIDER - CloudFlare

DCMA complaint page

Email: abuse@cloudflare.com

WEBSITE HOST - Hetzner Online GbmH

Email: abuse@hetzner.com

Sauce 1: https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup

Sauce 2: https://blogimg.ngfiles.com/1113000/iu_1113172_3993712.webp

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BRING ANY MORE ATTENTION TO THE SITE. Given recent information that AutomationTonic of Toyhou.se has provided, It would be safe to assume that whoever made this site did so with the intent to use word of mouth in an attempt to get it fed to online algorithms. (Thank you @Bappledik for posting this in the thread!)

The website in question looks like this:

Upon the information that has come to light I felt it appropriate to update this article in a way that will help those identify what the site will look like upon seeing any of the posts involving art wishers.

@Zfert has pointed out that there are similar sites to ArtWisher that are insanely similar to each other that are gathering images from google searches in the same manner as the site above.

There isn't much more I can do beyond what has been looked into. I do hope that this blog helps a few people out and these sites are taken down in the near future. Sooner rather than later if anything.

FINAL UPDATE TO THIS POST (11/16/2023):

While I have no intention of further updating this post, if new developments come to pass I will put it in the post if it's needed however, given the information that has come to light this will not be edited any further than it has been.

I appreciate everyone's efforts into getting to the bottom of this. All I can say at this point is to report the site to CloudFlare and Hetzner.