Making headlines on the month of January in 2012, Pinterest has reached 11.7 million users in no time. This quick rise has unfortunately been responsible in attracting various scammers and spammers who are eager to take undue advantage from Pinterest users. Also, the site has faced substantial criticism for provoking users to make unsure decisions about if and how they should be using the site with its varying privacy policies.

Well, there really are a lot of issues if a person is regularly a ‘pinner’. Scammers have taken a wide view on Pinterest and have developed tricks to look into the accounts of Facebook and twitter users who are using Pinterest.  Also these attacks have been made with an aim to make a loophole in the site’s platform and the visual nature of Pinterest.

Pinterest has lately been poisoned by various cyber criminals across the web. The scammers post captivating caption and photo which sometimes makes a compelling effect on the user to click and in turn follow the link. However, the links are not original and the users are redirected to fraudulent pages in turn. The pictures are usually of famous logos and the caption of a free gift or free merchandise manages to woo the users to click the link. These fraudulent links usually write captions and offers, which normally is hard to resist for the user unless he knows that it is a fraud.

The user unknowingly or under some curiosity clicks on these links which results in the following:

• The link either directs the user to some malware-infected website responsible for deploying viruses and other malware products with the sole aim to attack one’s computer or might also result in the stealth of one’s personal data.
• The site might also ask to re-pin onto Pinterest one’s images in order to win a prize or get something. Once it has been done, the followers of one pinner are also in turn tricked into clicking them. Thus the scam spreads like fire across users with the help of the users themselves!

How can you stop this?

A fully updated security suite installed into the computer can help saving oneself from this trap. While browsing, it is better to use some common sense. If you ever come across offers that seem too good to be true, then perhaps that offer is best left alone and not to be clicked upon.  One should readily report the link to pinterest, if they find the link to be fraudulent. It is wise to never end up sharing extremely personal and confidential information like finances and passwords to others on the platform. Also, adjusting the new privacy settings might seem to help a lot and having anti-viruses in your system like Avast Internet Security can help too.

Read why you should choose Avast Antivirus and Avast internet security for better protection.