Welcome to Scamterest: How Spam and Online Misdeeds Spread on Pinterest

Many brands have started using Pinterest to create buzz around their products. Some online retailers report that Pinterest users spend more money than their Facebook counterparts. With almost a million daily active users and very high visual impact, the sharing platform has also become a massive target for scammers and spammers.

Pinterest users can upload, save, sort and manage images and other media content through collections known as pinboards. Scammers also pin images to mislead users for commercial purposes. The social network acknowledged the problem and took action by allowing users to report questionable content and forbidding uploads from popular URL shorteners, such as bit.ly or goo.gl, which are famous in Scamland. However, a spammer can edit a picture`s source link with no further security checks once the picture has already been pinned.

Pinterest appears to share most scam baits with Facebook, mainly because it relies almost exclusively on visual content. The most popular cross-platform scams are gift card giveaways.

‘Please pin it‘ scams

This type of scam has been gaining traction since the introduction of the ‘Pin it’ button for websites. It follows a simple scenario. Users are redirected to a page that asks them to pin an apparently exciting video to their profile before watching it.

Clicking on the ‘Pin it’ button triggers a JavaScript call which opens a pop-up window. The pop-up lands the user on ‘get your prize’ pages or some form of SMS-based overcharging service.

Snippet of HTML Code

Affiliate marketing spam

This type of scam links a pin to the spammer’s affiliate account. Cyber-crooks create multiple fake accounts, re-pinning a lot of images which have proven to be popular. The spam accounts usually have few followers, but they follow a lot of people in the hope they’ll click on their pins, increasing the spammer’s revenue.

However, Pinterest has started stripping tags from Amazon affiliate links to prevent users from making money on pins.

Spam detection and solutions