- June 29, 2013 03:19pm EST
Fruit spam.
If you've been noticing a strange rise of fruit-related pictures in your Instagram feed today, don't worry. Your friends haven't become (even more) obsessed with taking pictures of their healthy meals.
Well, you might want to worry a wee bit, because the pictures might be linked to a fruit-themed spam attack that's slowly making its way around the popular photo-sharing service. It's unclear just how said spammers are getting a hold of users' login credentials, but the attack results in a number of pictures of fruit – of all things – being posted to a person's Instagram account.
The text accompanying the pictures also includes a Bitly hyperlink – clicked on more than 35,000 times as of this article's writing – that takes users to a fake BBC page promoting weight-loss coffee.
"Ever seen this stuff? I guess its super healthy, im giving it a try. I saw it on Dr Oz's show! Link is in my bio #lovemyfollowers #health," reads an example of one spammy photo's description.
To its credit, Bitly is now throwing up a giant warning message for users attempting to click through to the aforementioned link. It's possible the fake BBC site could just be a follow-through for the spam attack that attempts to pull money (and credit card credentials) from users foolish enough to place an order for the coffee, but there could also be some kind of method for pulling a user's login credentials hosted on the itself. That's the part we remain a bit in the dark on – how spammers get one's credentials in the first place and load up one's account with the fruity photos (in addition to changing a user's bio to reference said fake BBC page).
The spam attack was first reported by GigaOm's Om Malik earlier today and, according to him, Facebook hasn't offered up any comment as to what might be going on.
Those who feel as if their accounts have been compromised only really have one major recourse: Resetting their passwords (and, hopefully, using as strong a passphrase as they can remember). It's also worth going into one's third-party application access list – accessible via this link – which allows you to see what non-Instagram sites have access to your account. Revoke the privileges of anything that sounds unknown or odd.
Beyond that, users can also check their follower lists to make sure they aren't following any obvious spam accounts — and do report those, or any spam-filled comments you happen to find on your photos, if that's the case.
