Just like every other social networking site, the latest social media entrant – Pinterest is no exception to the spams. After targetting the most popular networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest has also been targetted by the spammers as the visitor traffic is rapidly growing here.
Unlike other social networking sites where vulgar videos are circulated most of the times, the scammers have come up with offers that are too good to be true on Pinterest. Once re-pinned, these links take you to an external website or an online survey which promises to reward you. These surveys if completed help the perpetrators to make money.
But the difficult task is not to click on the content posted by the known users. If you have become a victim of these spammers, then these offers will be shown as posted by you, which can mislead others. As stated by Mashable, the ‘easy to use’ interface of Pinterest is attracting more traffic, which in turn is attracting spammers. Softpedia has brought these issues to the attention of the network to which this social media company has quickly responded. According to SC Magazine, Pinterest has said that their engineers are looking into the matter and working towards fixing the security issues. They are also finding ways to ensure that no harmful content gets on to the public feeds.
The commonly asked question about this whole spamming is ‘how are the spammers benefitted?’ According to Symantec, spammers make money between one and 64 U.S. Dollars for every successful conversion.
Some of the scams as told by the security company, ‘Trend Micro’ were free gift cards by Star Bucks and free wallets and purses by the luxury brand Coach. Before clicking on any ‘too good to be true’ offers on Pinterest, the users should remember that no offered goods will be delivered to you, but your personal details will surely be leaked and misused therefore.
Enlightening on the topic Mr. Nishant Doshi, Symantec Researcher said that most scam pages ask users to fill in surveys, subscribe to certain services, fill in personal information or install executables. Whereas Catalin Cosoi, chief security officer of BitDefender said that unlike facebook and twitter, spotting a spam on Pinterest is tricky as it’s only a picture you have to click on or re-pin. To control these spams, the experts from the security software companies hence suggest not to re-pin any link or image posted by an unrecognised user.