Thursday, May 24, 2012

What Happened To Pinterest?

I love Pinterest.  A lot.  It's great to be able to pin a new recipe, inspired room, or DIY craft.  Having everything on one page is so convenient.  I no longer have tons of bookmarked websites.  Or folders in my file cabinet filled with magazine pages.  Yay!

But...

Lately, it seems the spammers have taken over.  At first, I noticed that if I searched for something, like a "pillow", some of the pins that would come up would lead to spam.  OK, I can handle that.  I would try to click through but there would be no tutorial or shop.  Just spam.  Boo.  In the last few weeks, I've noticed a huge shift towards spam.  Now if I search for "pillow", I get this -



OK.  Nice pillow but not exactly what I was looking for.  The spammers have learned to write a caption that will get noticed (In this example, the caption is "Pillow pillow pillow pillow")  Btw, every one of these pins is spam (not a shocker).  And, every one of these pins has already been reported as spam.  So, why are they still showing up?

I wasn't ready to lose hope just yet.  I decided that the best way to find new things was to skip the search bar and just repin things from users that I follow only.  Which has helped a lot.  (This is where I need your help - I'd like to follow you!  Please leave a link to your Pinterest boards in the comments and I'll follow you.  If you are interested, you can find my boards here)  I also pin things that I find all over the web.  Problem solved, right?

Nope.

Last night, we attended my son's high school graduation.  Super fun!  So proud of him!  Anyway, when I returned home, I hopped onto my computer and did some surfing.  Of course that meant checking out Pinterest.  And something caught my eye.  I happened to notice that someone had left a comment on one of my pins.  Which doesn't happen too often.  I clicked on the notification, and found this -


This is one of my boards.  Except it isn't.  Somehow, a spammer created a whole new board in my account.  And pinned a really crazy image - 


This is all fake.  I had absolutely nothing to do with it.  I didn't create that board and I didn't pin that image.  And most likely, if I hadn't seen that notification, I wouldn't have caught this on my account for a long time.  (Actually, I have no idea how long it's been there.  It wasn't even the last board on my 'wall' - it was somewhat camouflaged in the middle.)  I marked the pin as spam and deleted the board (there was no way of marking the whole board as spam).  This was completely out of my control.  And that makes me nervous.  I have over 1300 pins.  I plan on going through each and every one of them over the next couple of days to make sure they are legit.  I also changed my password.  I'm hopeful but I don't know if it will stop this fake board and pin spam from happening again.  

Has this happened to any of you?  Have you seen this before?  Are you a little nervous about the security (or lack there of) of Pinterest?  I'm really hoping that they will be able to add more layers of control so this doesn't happen again.  My fingers are crossed - I don't want to go back to a pre-Pinterest world!

18 comments:

  1. I've noticed not only the spam coming up... but porn images are also coming up. And Pinterest isn't being at all quick to respond. :-(

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    1. Teri - I haven't noticed porn images (thank goodness) but there are definitely some security problems. :-(

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  2. I have noticed more spam but I have not personally had any on my boards. This may be common knowledge, I didn't know, but I have my profile blocked from search engines. Maybe that helps. Anyways I would love for you to follow me. jenwelch12. I am already following you I think. Have a good day.

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    1. Jen - That's great advice! I am also hidden from search engines but it didn't seem to help me with this problem. And I'm a new follower!

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  3. Well, now you have me worried again. I deleted my Pinterest account a few months, but I just started one again. Now I'm wondering if it's really worth the aggravation.

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    1. I am addicted to Pinterest. I don't want to delete my account but I plan to be very careful about what I pin!

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  4. I too got porn popping up! Too bad that this stuff is spoiling our fun!

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  5. I love Pinterest but know from some people who work in that industry that, technically speaking, they are not well-protected from spammers. Spammers know this and it is one of the most spammed sites on the web. There's also a problem with people setting up fake accounts. These people then pin items from their amazon affiliate accounts so they get compensated for clicks and purchases that result. (http://www.dailydot.com/news/pinterest-steve-amazon-spammer-tells-all/) It's not as bad as porn but it's still kind of shocking...

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  6. I don't understand the spam thing, but I sure hope Pinterest doesn't go away cause' I love it. Thanks for the heads up!

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  7. Not a spam issue but did you know that on your Google ad Obama ads keep showing up? Maybe no big deal to you, but I just thought you may want to know that politics is now a Google thing.

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    1. Thanks for the info! Those ads aren't showing up for me so I wasn't aware. I would rather not have political ads on my site. I'll look into it. Thanks!

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  8. I love Pinterest, even though the spam is getting annoying. I haven't had anything like that happen to me though. I'm following you on Pinterest now. My boards are at: http://pinterest.com/planetpowers.

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  9. I am so bummed about all the spamming. It makes it so hard to link back to projects from bloggers on our blogs.
    I heard that the Pinterest staff is VERY small which is why it takes so long to actually get the approval without an invite.
    I hope it gets cleaned up!
    http://pinterest.com/nellyrene/

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  10. The spam is getting ridiculous. I've even gotten notifications from pinterest in my email telling me someone mentioned me in a pin, and the pin leads me to a weightloss site...ummm...not interested. The worst part is the person has followed me, so I don't know how to stop those from showing up.
    http://pinterest.com/loribethswan/

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  11. Hello! Thanks for hopping by during the May Networking Blog Hop! Great blog with inspiring ideas! I hope the spammers get out of Pinterest! It is too awesome to spammers. :D Hope you will come back soon!

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  12. It's happened to me too, four times now! I have complained to Pintrest, and nothing.
    I changed my password 4 times.
    I deep scanned my incredibly secure computer, completely clean.
    It's something in Pintrest that someone is exploiting.

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  13. Hello there! Do you usually use online social media websites?

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