Pinterest users targeted with scams

Pinterest, the pinboard-styled social photo sharing website that got so popular even Mark Zuckerberg opened a profile to see what all the fuss was about, has also caught the attention of online scammers and spammers.

If you are a user of the site, you couldn’t help noticing the Starbucks image being re-pinned constantly in the last couple of days, along with the offer of a free gift certificate to anybody who followed the link.

Another bogus offer popping up was that of luxury brand Coach Leatherware supposedly offering wallets and purses for free.

Once the users followed the link, they were taken to a website where they were fist instructed to re-pin the image, and then follow another link to a scam survey site:

“It’s the same attack we’ve seen before, but on a a different social media site. Cybercriminals use names of legitimate brands to convince users to either click a link or visit a particular site,” point out Trend Micro researchers. Indeed, scams like this can regularly be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Pinterest has, for now, removed the offending pins, but there is no doubt that the same type of scam with different lures will pop up on the site again – such is the price of popularity and a wide user base.