Our customers and designers place a lot of trust in us and we strive to make sure that Iconfinder is fair and complies with all copyright laws. We take copyright issues and protection very seriously and have a "Zero Tolerance" policy when it comes to plagiarism and copyright theft. Before a contributor is paid royalties for the first time, we require than they verify their identity (they are who they claim to be), and that they own the copyright to any materials they have uploaded to our site and are attempting to sell.

A government-issued identification with a photo is required in order to establish your identity. This identification is used for verification purposes only and is not stored on our system once a contributor's identity has been confirmed by one of our staff. In order to maintain the integrity and safety of your persona information, we will create a secure folder on our Dropbox account (or similarly secure service) into which you can place a high-quality scan of your documents. Once we have verified your identity, the file(s) will be deleted from our system. How long the documents remain on our system depends on how quickly we, working together with you, are able to confirm your identity and copyright ownership.

In lieu of a government-issued photo identification, we will also accept a publicly-accessible account on a reputable social media/professional network such as LinkedIn. In order to accept such an alternative, however, the account must be at least 90 days old and must have professional contacts and an employment history that we can verify.

We take copyright issues very seriously and we have a zero-tolerance policy. If any member of our site is proven to be uploading and selling or attempting to sell copyrighted material that they do not own, their account will be closed and they will be banned from our site, permanently. Any royalties that have been collected from the sale of any content associated with a fraudulent account will, at our discretion, be returned to the customer(s).

Icons and illustrations do not magically appear on the page. Creating vector artwork requires time and skill and like any other human activity, there are artifacts that result from the creation process. The artifacts of creating vector artwork are usually in the form of hand-drawn sketches on paper, half-finished graphics or artwork with un-expanded lines, abandoned creations, multiple versions of the same icons, alternate versions of the same icons or illustrations, and un-used items. When a designer is unable to produce these artifacts, it casts serious doubt on the authenticity of the copyright claim. Each designer will be asked to submit a minimum of three examples of these artifacts, preferably of the items being sold, but comparable artifacts in the same or similar style that demonstrate the competency to be able to create the items in question will be acceptable.

We also request links to other marketplaces and social media sites where the contributor has submitted work. If you are unable to provide the artifacts requested above, a social media post or other online portfolio with the items in question will be acceptable provided that the items were not submitted immediately before or immediately after the request was made. Most designers, especially those who are selling their work promote themselves. We are looking for proof that the contributor promoted the items through their usual social media, marketing, and sales channels. Please note that the accounts in question must be registered under the legal name of the contributor and not an alias.

We reserve the right to request additional information in order to verify the identity of all contributors to our site. We also reserve the right to reject any content or suspend any account that we suspect is fraudulent or when the contributor is unable or unwilling to provide the requested information or if the requested information does not reasonably provide proof of identity and of ownership of all copyrights in question.

Iconfinder has a responsibility to the design community, to our customers, and as a matter of general ethics to verify, to the best of our abilities, that all sellers own the copyrights to the digital goods they sell in our marketplace. Given the nature of the internet, it is difficult to verify such ownership. In order to verify with reasonable certainty that each seller owns the goods they sell, we rely on the factors above.

We will process your verification request as fast as possible. Please be patient. We are a small team running a big site and sometimes it can take us a little longer than you, and we, would like. But we promise to do our best.

Also, the process may require a little bit of communication back-and-forth. The more thorough you are in supplying the requested information, and the quicker your reply to questions and requests, the quicker we can complete the verification process.
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You can start the account verification process directly on the Cash out page once you reach $50 in sales. There, you will find a link and a description of the documents that you should submit for us to verify you. 

We have also put together a checklist for verifying your account on Iconfinder, which is worth checking out.  Please refer to it in order to get started.
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