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Less Than 24 Hours After Debut Ping Falling Prey To Spam And Scams

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by Cromwell Schubarth
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Sep 03 2010 10:05am EDT

Ping Falling Prey to Spam

Offers for free iPhones like this, for example, are appearing as comments on the pages of popular artists like Jack Johnson on iTunes Ping.

Barely 24 hours after Apple Inc. launched its new iTunes Ping, spammers and scammers were already reportedly rushing into the new social network.

The MacRumors site reports that a "free iPhone" scam appears to be the first major instance, showing up on a number of the most popular music artists now using Ping.

Part of the problem is that Apple doesn't require a credit card to open an iTunes account, eliminating the confirmed payment details that might discourage spammers.

Internet security company Sophos said on a blog, "Most of the security industry has been pointing out the migration of spam from an email-only venture to blog/forum comments, Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 platforms. But apparently Apple didn't consider this when designing Ping, as the service implements no spam or URL filtering. It is no big shock that less than 24 hours after launch, Ping is drowning in scams and spams."

Cromwell Schubarth is the Multimedia/Research Editor for the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.

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