But luckily just the one, not a series. Here goes…
I’ve said before that I enjoy Pinterest and I use it to save everything from quilt ideas to recipes. I mostly ignore the ads, though I do note that they somehow have me pegged as needing plus size clothing, which is not the case, thanks!
I know there’s a lot of “profiling” going on at Pinterest as well as most other sites, but usually I don’t worry about it. However: I recently found an idea I thought I’d blog about, so I started a Pinterest board labelled “blog”.
Oh. my. goodness. Pinterest immediately sent me a bunch of suggested pins concerning how to “improve” my blog. The first one I clicked on led to an obviously fake blog post (meaning this person doesn’t really have a blog, she’s just a front for an advertisement). That was bad enough, but the product advertised is designed to “spam” Pinterest for you by posting your stuff several times a day with “no effort” on your part. This is supposed to drive traffic to your blog, and it probably does.
Now I wonder how many people are using the strategy of spamming Pinterest to have their stuff put in front of me looking like a genuine pin, when really it is an ad? I’m always cautious online, but this is ridiculous.
You’ve been warned. And I’ll go back to blogging nice pictures of quilts next week.
Anybody had a similar experience with Pinterest?
Zippy Quilts 
So crazy how targeted all the ads are!
Thanks for visiting 🙂
I don’t use Pinterest, so I haven’t had that experience. The ads on most sites are either hilariously off-target, like the plus-size clothing, or creepily accurate. It makes me think the big sites and the big advertisers are grossly incestuous for the data they share on us.
Probably they do all sell data to each other. Thanks for commenting, Melanie. And have a great 2018!
This is a real eye opener about Pinterest.
There have been a few occasions where I open a pin and my computer security pops up a warning.But I was unaware of the type of spamming you experienced. Thanks for the warning.💻
I do enjoy Pinterest I think have trained my eyes to not see all the adds they are now throwing at us. I rarely use Facebook anymore just can not stand all the adds and strange things they post. Sad that Instagram is going the same way. I too am very cautious on line have malware protection and never click on suites that seem suspicious.
Yes, I’ve even blocked posts from a couple of acquaintances on FB. Thanks for commenting.
Be careful with Pinterest. I have had my work stolen off of there and someone else was profiting monetarily from it.
Yikes! Thanks for the warning ⚠️
Oh that is terrible! Sorry to read this 😦
Sorry to hear you experienced that. I have noticed a bit of spammy stuff on Pinterest – like when you see a cute bag pattern and click on the pin and find the website is very spammy. I am not sure why spammers think we are suddenly going to just buy whatever they are selling. Thanks for the warning.
When I have googled some of the companies advertising on Pinterest, many have poor reviews. I agree with you, why would we just buy something random because we see an ad?
I don’t know if it’s from Pinterest, but I do receive an inordinate amount of spam email purporting to improve my blog. This, in a year when I posted maybe five times! Luckily, my email goes through a University server which has a very stringent filter, so most of it is trashed before I even see it.
As with a lot of things, some folks have found that the money is not in blogging (which I didn’t expect anyway), but in selling to people who hope to make money on blogging 😝. Well, they missed the boat with us 😃
We just can’t be too careful! When we have inquiring minds, it can get us in trouble!