No, it means you're trying way too hard to convince me using unrelated smokescreens, and oftentimes borders on deception.

How many times have you seen, on a support page or whatnot, a picture of a smiling call center guy with a headset? It's probably the most common usage of a stock photo.

But that isn't your support guy, in fact a lot of these places have the founders answering their own phones - so why pretend to be a big company when you are not?

What sort of idiot would consider a photo convincing in the first place? It is just there to attract notice/attention; the point of the article is that they often attract attention to the wrong part of the ad.

I'm not saying you should pretend to be a bigger company, but there's a huge gap between pretending to be bigger and more professional than you are and running a scam.

I didn't say scam - but it does come off as dishonest and misleading. If you have a smiling support guy on staff, yeah, by all means, put his photo up on your support page - I appreciate little human gestures like that. But stock photography in its various common internet forms is just laziness.

I wouldn't call it laziness. It is often being frugal. You would be surprised at the number of large companies that use stock photos as well. I think you would also be surprised at the amount of stock photography that you have not idea is stock photography, because the designer either manipulated the image or the chose a good photo for the purpose of the page.

I think we are limiting ourselves here in how stock photography can be used.

You didn't say scam, but my original comment was in response to someone who did.

I agree that it's lazy and makes a bad impression for hackers, though I doubt 99% of normal people would notice or care.

Most people won't notice. The ones who do notice will probably find some other excuse.

You're talking past each other.

You're talking about what is the case. He's talking about perception. If your site has any of the same signals of an illegitimate site, then you're in trouble. He has no reason to give you the benefit of the doubt and spend enough time poking around your site to convince him that you're legit.