Apple Pinged by Spammers
posted Sunday Sep 5, 2010 by Scott Ertz
We have talked before about how Apple has security problems and aren't interested in fixing them. Our newest example of this is Apple's new social networking venture, Ping. Ping is a social network built into iTunes 10 that is designed to connect you with your favorite artists. According to Apple,
True fans know it all: What their favorite artists are playing — and when and where they’re playing it. Set your inner groupie free by following your favorite artists on Ping.
However, because of Apple's lack of security or forethought about security, the only thing you can really do through Ping is get scammed.
How can you get scammed through Ping? Hit the break.
Apple's sign-up process is so lax and the approval process is so easy that, within the first 24 hours, almost the entire network was filled with spammers offering free iPods and iPads through comments on artists like Lady GaGa. Nothing about the comments are impossible to filter, either. Every good blog site has filter systems like Disqus that would recognize all of these scams and filter them automatically, so what is happening on Ping?
I have no idea. If you want to post a profile picture, Apple has to approve it, but if you want to post a comment about winning a free iPad by taking surveys, that is perfectly OK. Somehow Apple didn't think that anyone would ever try and spam this system because you almost never get it on Facebook? Did they think that just happened by chance or do they really not know that there are ways to prevent it?
They do have a "Report Comment" link, but we all know how well that works. It works pretty well if it is the second line of defense, for those comments that pass by the filter, but it doesn't work at all if it is the only way to filter comments.