Was my Pinterest account hacked?
September 25th, 2013
This morning while I lay sleeping, someone got the bright idea to post something as me on Twitter. If this wasn’t bad enough it turns out they posted as me on Pinterest and on Facebook too. They were selling something called “garcinia cambogia”. Apparently Pinterest is seeing a rise in hacked accounts, they of course blame me and my password. Clearly the spammers and scammers have Pinterest in their sights.
I changed my Twitter and Pinterest passwords, I deleted a bunch of apps that have posting rights to my Twitter account. I filed an official help request. I took down the offending tweets, posts, and pins, but not before first taking screenshots.
It is even worse for me as I have my Pins displayed on my homepage. Even after deleting the pin, the spam still appears on my homepage because the RSS feed was cached. I can delete the cache, but first I took yet another screenshot.
It appears I wasn’t the only person whose Pinterest account was hacked and things have only gotten worse you should subscribe to Have I Been Pawned? because the answer is inevitably “yes”. If you have something to add you can leave a comment below.
This entry was originaly posted on , it was last edited on and is filed under: Technology and tagged: Pinterest, Spam, Twitter.
Hello, I’ve had the same problem. I noticed a few days ago that people were repinning my pins even though I was busy and hadn’t logged on to Pinterest in about a week. Last night I had time to browse Pinterest and saw that I had pinned pins I don’t recall pinning, mostly weight loss before and after pictures. I also noticed that it had created a board filled with these pins. I deleted them all and changed my password. Today, I’m wondering if it was an isolated incident or if other people are experiencing the same problems. How do I contact Pinterest to let them know what happened?
It seems to be happening more, not just on Pinterest but on Twitter and Facebook, either people’s passwords are being cracked or they have given permission to an app to post for them and that app is corrupt. Pinterest doesn’t have an API so it is most likely your password has been compromised. All of Adobe’s client info was stolen the other day, that is how crackers get a starting point for brute force attacks, they buy a list of common passwords, of course service providers should deny brute force attacks from happening at all by only allowing 3 wrong passwords…
If you want to contact Pinterest they have a support form:
https://en.help.pinterest.com/requests/new
I JUST got the “weight loss” photos thing on an account I have never used.
There’s literally no way someone could have gotten the password to it.
I bet Pinterest has HORRIBLE security.
mine too…do you subscribe to groupon and use your fb account to log in? I’m wondering if Groupon is connected to this mess since the garcinia cambogia uses a Groupon.
I’ve never used, joined, or logged into Groupon to the best of my knowledge. I’m aware of the website, it does online coupons, my mom and sister might use it. The Pinterest support person said they have been seeing a rise in hacked accounts. My password was pretty strong, six letters and a number, not a word from the dictionary, etc. But it was breakable brute force. I’m also guilty of using the same password on more than one website. I’ve tried to upgrade my passwords to be longer and more complicated.
I like to think I’m just getting popular on Pinterest so hackers went after me, but truth is it was probably bad luck and reusing the same password too much.