Pinterest Users Hit with Phishing Attacks and Links to Survey Scam Sites

With every new and thriving phenomenon on the Internet, including the last and greatest social networks, comes an abundance of attacks from cybercrooks and malicious hackers. One notable phenomenon, attracting over 11 million unique visitors each week, is the Pinterest social photo sharing website. Even though Pinterest is still in its infancy, it has received its official scammer initiation by a group of hackers posting images and links to 'free offers' onto user's Pinterest boards.

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social sites on the Internet. The site allows users to create boards where they can pin a particular image or group of images to share with others. In a nutshell, Pinterest brings the simplicity of Twitter to the realm of digital imagery over the Internet.

Aside from all of the benefits and rapid growth statics of Pinterest, there lies a much more serious issue Pinterest is facing at the hands of scammers. Survey spammers have targeted Pinterest in a scheme to post as many images and links to 'free offers'. These 'free offers' are actually embedded links to external websites that requests users to re-pin the offer onto their own board on Pinterest.

With the state of today's economic conditions across the world, who wouldn't want to take up an offer for free stuff? Unfortunately, that is exactly what the Pinterest scammers try to exploit through their 'free offers' plentifully pinned to several Pinterest user's boards.

Some of the so-called 'free offers' pinned in abundance on Pinterest boards, lead to links that hijack user's web browsers further redirecting them to a survey scam site. We could say the phishers have dropped their lines to reel in the latest fresh catch from the Pinterest sea populated with 11 million-plus potential victims.

Figure 1. – Pinterest 'free offer' scam image pinned to a board.

Pinterest users should be made aware of the recent 'free offers' scam and how it works. The beginning of the scam first asks users to Pin an image (similar to Figure 1 above) to their board and then click on a link to redirect them to a page to claim their 'offer'. After that, a survey is displayed requiring entry of credit card information or other private data to complete the claim. Obviously, entering personal information on these surveys may ultimately lead to identity theft.

Much of this uncovered Pinterest scam reminds us of the scams that plagued Facebook and Twitter during their earlier life. However, Pinterest does integrate nicely with other social networks. So, the scammers have found it convenient to spread malicious programs to reach Facebook and Twitter. Why stop at one social network when you can hit them all at the same time?