14 DAY TRIAL // The accounts of several Pinterest users have been abused in a spam campaign promoting shady weight loss products and giveaways. The social media company’s representatives say they’re aware of the spam run and they’re taking steps to shut it down.
Startup expert Hermione Way was among the first to report that her account had been hacked and abused to post hundreds of images of women before and after a diet, and links promoting giveaways.
The spammy messages read something like this: “I couldn’t believe it when I lost 6 lbs,” “I lost ten pounds in the first two weeks,” “It’s seriously the best thing I have ever tried” or “I was amazed when it really worked and I lost 14lbs.”
“Our systems were alerted to some incidents of spam yesterday evening. These reports did not come in at a large scale. We began working on cleaning up and placing the accounts in safe mode immediately. The accounts have since been secured,” Pinterest representatives have told TechCrunch.
The company advises users to use unique and strong passwords to protect their accounts against such hack attacks.
The Daily Mail reports that the spam campaign isn’t a result of a problem in Pinterest itself. Instead, the spammers have compromised websites that host “Pin this” buttons and replaced the legitimate code with their own. When victims click the “Pin this” button on these hijacked sites, they’re actually pinning spam posts.
Earlier this month, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) published an advisory to warn users of the various scams making the rounds on the social media platform.
Users who come across these spammy pins are advised to report them to Pinterest by clicking the flag icon at the bottom of the image.
If it detects a compromised account, Pinterest will automatically prompt customers to change their passwords. However, people who think their accounts might have been hijacked should not wait around for Pinterest to detect the hack attack and change their password immediately.
The BBB also advises internauts to be on the lookout for fake Pinterest login pages and to check the legitimacy of the links they repin.
As every major social media service, Pinterest is struggling to keep out spammers, but the task is not easy. This is why users must always be careful when surfing the website to make sure they don’t end up on scam sites or ones that serve dangerous pieces of malware.