Pinterest diet spam – is the site doing enough to stop it?

As Pinterest’s popularity increases, so do the reports of spam on the fast-growing photo-sharing network.

A Naked Security reader reported to use today spam they had received via Pinterest, where the spammer had tagged their name in the message they had posted.

The Pinterest posts, which claimed to offer a wonder diet, used various images of scantily-clad models lazing about in their lingerie or swimsuits to entice unsuspecting users into clicking.

If you were one of the people who clicked on the bit.ly link, however, you might find yourself redirected (via a dental website that really shouldn’t be allowing anyone to redirect traffic to a third party site) to a bogus news page, promoting alleged diet products.

The good news is that Pinterest is now blocking the links..

..but why haven’t they also closed down the profile of the spammer, who has “pinned” hundreds of other similar posts?

My guess is that it won’t be long before the spammer is posting links which aren’t being…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.