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Spammers Attack Apple's Ping Social Network

Posted by Soulskill on from the strict-inevitabilities dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Scammers and spammers have deluged the new Ping musical social network, created by Apple and built into the new version of iTunes. Sophos researchers have found that Ping is being overrun by scams and spam messages. 'Apple seems to have anticipated a certain degree of malfeasance, as profile pictures that you upload will not appear until approved by Apple. They are likely filtering for other offensive content as well, so they probably have means in place they could use to stop the spam.' It's ironic that the most common scams on Ping right now revolve around Apple's own iPhone." The Sophos blog post adds that Apple is doing their best to clamp down on the spam, manually deleting many of the offending messages for now. Reader Tootech adds that Facebook integration was quickly disabled, possibly because of blocked API access.

7 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Irony.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    We need to invent a new word for the people who keep abusing ironic. Otherwise irony is going to have a different meaning in 10 more years. Teaching them what irony actually means is hopeless. Ditto for literally... except that 'literally' is already a lost cause, and irony isn't (yet).

  2. Yes by slyguy135 · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002021.html

  3. Re:maybe spamming is a ...... by tomhudson · · Score: 2, Informative

    Better the cold, soft lead of a bullet.

    How can this be? Are you going to be inserting the bullet into the spammer manually?

    I'll see your single cold bullet and raise you with a spray of hot lead.

    But since I don't own a gun, I'll have to go to the store and buy a whole mess of fishing sinkers, and melt them on the stove.

    My way, it's only the hope of dying that keeps them alive.

  4. Re:What jerks by Lars+T. · · Score: 1, Informative

    Steve Jobs is hardly in a position to be able to complain about "onerous terms" being placed on people. How many pages is the EULA for that abortion iTunes up to? 103? It's over a hundred...

    The PDF is 79 pages, some of them empty - and that's for the EULA in 18 languages. IOW, nope.

    --

    Lars T.

    To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

  5. Not just spammers... Imposters too by domulys · · Score: 3, Informative

    As Ben Folds recently discovered, some artists have seen Ping accounts set up -- in their name -- without their knowledge or consent.

    http://twitter.com/BenFolds/status/22830984597
    http://twitter.com/BenFolds/status/22840802922

  6. Re:maybe spamming is a ...... by cawpin · · Score: 2, Informative

    No. A FMJ bullet has a jacket made of COPPER, not steel. No bullet uses a steel jacket as that would wear out a barrel very quickly. Some AP (for Armor Piercing) uses a steel penetrator core, a very small steel shank inside the bullet.

    Also, spamming is like a shotgun, spreading small pellets EVERYWHERE hoping to hit something.

  7. Re:What jerks by vux984 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try downloading a free app on your iphone. They force an itms EULA on you there too. And yes its over 100 "pages" there.
    100+ pages of eula to obtain a free app is stupid.