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Pinterest Hacked with Best Buy, Diet Pills Pins

March 17, 2012 By 5 Comments
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Tonight my wife complained about getting hacked on Pinterest, saying that shortly after noticing a suspicious pin about a free Best Buy gift card by a friend, the same item was pinned in her name as well.

I laughed.

Then I went to Pinterest. The moment I did, the offending free Best Buy gift card pin flashed in my name.

pinteresthacked Pinterest Hacked with Best Buy, Diet Pills Pins

Pinterest hacked? Yep.

I’ve never seen anything like this. Sure, spam and hoaxes have infiltrated Pinterest. People will share things, hoping they are legit. Or, like on Facebook, someone will click a link that they shouldn’t.

But this is different. I didn’t click anything. All I did was go to the Pinterest home page when that pin showed up under someone else’s name. I didn’t click to view a close-up. I didn’t do anything. Within seconds, a new one was in the feed under my name.

When this happens, it’s easy to panic since the button to edit or remove it is not on the pin. You instead need to go to your Pins in your account drop-down at the top right.

pins Pinterest Hacked with Best Buy, Diet Pills Pins

This appears to be a widespread problem hitting today with other hacks around Diet Pills and Starbucks Gift cards. So be vigilant.

First of all: I hate people who do this crap. I just thought I’d say that.

Second: This is alarming. I’m still trying to figure out how someone could hack my account when all I did was SEE the Best Buy Gift Card pin. So this is a pretty significant security flaw on the part of Pinterest.

Are you still at risk if you were hit? I have no idea what the impact is of this. I’m not an expert on getting hacked. But I’d suggest changing your password and then make sure to contact Pinterest about what happened.

Did this happen to you? Let me know what happened below!

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Jon Loomer About Jon Loomer

Jon Loomer is a digital marketing consultant with a unique perspective on social media. He was introduced to Facebook in 2007 while with the NBA (back before Pages) and has been using Facebook for business ever since. Stay in touch by liking his Facebook Page (Jon Loomer Digital).

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  • Lila

    it JUST happened to me.  i was able to delete it (at least for the time-being) and am about to change my password and contact pinterst).  thanks for the post.

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Way to stay on top of it, Lila! I’m still amazed. This is not your typical hack.

  • Will Rosner

    Actually, it is a typical hack. Changing your password won’t really work either, as it seems there is a hole in the program that’s allowing the malicious code in. In 15 seconds I found this on Wikipedia:

    Social engineering of Pinterest users by scammers to propagate surveys promising free products was noted by computer security firms Symantec and Trend Micro in March 2012. Scam images, often branded with a well-known company name like Starbucks,
    offer incentives such as gift cards for completing a survey. Once the
    link in the description is clicked, users are taken to an external site
    and asked to re-pin the scam image. Victims are phished for their personal information and the promised free product is never delivered.[26]

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Thanks for the quick research, Will! The thing is, what is described there is not what happened here. Sure, there was a promise of a an offer or incentive. But that’s where the similarities end.

      That description indicates that the user must click the survey to be taken to an external site, etc. None of that happens here. All the user needs to do is go to their Pinterest home page when someone they follow posts the pin. I never clicked the pin. I never clicked to enlarge the pin. It was simply on my home page. And the second I went to my home page, it pinned in my name as well.

      Like I said, this is not your typical hack.

  • Pillsdiety

    Genesis
    seems like a great and amazing thing. It really helps me a lot to design
    websites.

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