Few reports as to spam emails and hacked accounts coming out.
It seems that so many web sites are being attacked and security breaches happening, that it makes you wonder what is going on. These get a lot of news coverage as to what has happened and numerous reports go along with that. But, there is talk about a security breach over at Pinterest, but there is almost no reports about what is going on. It seems that Pinterest is still trying to determine exactly what has happened and how it may have occurred.
There is a long story from TechCrunch regarding Pinterest locking some accounts because of reported hacks that are going on. This goes back to July 16th when Pinterest sent out questionnaires in an attempt to narrow down exactly what happened. You can see the actual "locked account survey" to see the kinds of things they are asking people. The questions and information being gathered seem to make it rather obvious that they are fishing for an explanation as to what is going on.
Another site reporting on this is LLSocial.com and they are providing some limited information and it looks to be the source for the report by TechCrunch. Why this has not been picked up by many bloggers is unknown as this is quite a story. It could be due to a lack on understanding by Pinterest as to exactly what has happened. Here is what we can gather and it has been going on since prior to July 7th when things escalated with the number of reports, which is not good.
It seems that people may be "pinning" something from Facebook on Pinterest. And it is that item which may be cause a problem. It apparently put itself on to Make Money Online in one report. That appears to have been the start of the problem for some, but not all. The pinning of the item hacked their account and others who clicked on the pinned item had their accounts hacked. But it looks like this is not the only source and that seems to be part of the bigger of problem of trying to figure out just how widespread this may be.
Others are saying they never linked something from Facebook to Pinterest. They may have clicked on something in Pinterest which resulted in their account getting hacked. In the comments from the LLSocial.com site, some are speculating that this may have something to do with the names being used for boards. And some specific names for boards that contain the word "Products" for example are being hacked and taken over. In some cases, the board name is deleted and another one with a similar name is created. Some have been inactive for a few months and logged in to find their account had been hacked and someone posting to their account.
It would appear the problems here are widespread and Pinterest is struggling to keep up with the volume of reports. Given that it appears they are still guessing, it is going to be a while before they can determine exactly what is going on. It would appear there is some flaw in Pinterest and the code behind it. And until they can figure out exactly how this is happening and the scope of it, it is very difficult to "Pin" down what the problem is and make corrections to stop it.
We all remember the complete shutdown of Sony's Play Station gaming site over a year ago because hackers had gained access to many of their servers and services. The situation at Pinterest is starting to look shaking with limited information coming out and a number of theories as to exactly what is going on. Whatever the flaw in their system is, they had better figure it out quickly or their reputation will disappear quickly because of the security problems.
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