Spammers Attack Apple's Ping Social Network 85
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.
Irony.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you know it, mofo? No. You do not. It is not ironic that apple hardware (iphones) is being used to entice people into a scam on apple software. Especially when the software is what you use to keep your iphone up to date.
Perhaps if they were scamming you into buying music for a zune, we could talk irony.
Re:Does spamming still generate real profits? (Score:4, Insightful)
The cost of sending mass emails is still so low that even if they get one sucker a week out of millions of messages sent, it is still profitable, and honestly, they probably get more than that.
Its easy for us to sit back and laugh at these situations, but there are still plenty of people out that who are unaware of what happens out on the wider Internet.
Its not going to last forever, but it will probably last longer than we would expect.
Re:Does spamming still generate real profits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you say these offers are unreal? I got a this pill by mail and now my erection is never ending (both time-wise and length-wise), which goes well with all the boatloads of money I got from this nice guy in distress who mailed me the other day. If you want more details, contact me at ******** (In order to view the contact information, you are requested to send 100$ to the following bank acco#%$# - *** Transmission Blocked ***.
What jerks (Score:5, Insightful)
"Steve Jobs complained to me about what he called "onerous terms" that Facebook had demanded for the friends connection "
I mean, here Apple is, just minding it's own business trying to build an application to replace facebook, and facebook won't give them all their user data for nothing? What jerks. How dare they put restrictions on it like that? Who do they think they are, trying to stay in business after Apple told them it's not their turn anymore?
I don't see any compelling reason that facebook would ever give their friends lists to Apple. Is there even a theoretical benefit for facebook in doing so?
Dear Apple: (Score:5, Insightful)
Please remove the current iTunes codebase from the life-support you insist on keeping it on. Let the craplication die already, its brain is already dead.
Rewrite it, buy another developer, or open the damn platform so someone else can do it.
Re:Does spamming still generate real profits? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they didn't turn a profit, they wouldn't be out there.
Re:What jerks (Score:5, Insightful)
"Steve Jobs complained to me about what he called "onerous terms" that Facebook had demanded for the friends connection "
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...
Re:Does spamming still generate real profits? (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you think they aren't? You realize that a lot of these online pharma stores do in fact sell pharmaceuticals, right? Of course if you buy them you might get dosages too strong, too weak, or sold alongside other things that can kill you, but they do sell Viagra! One reason the "Canadian Pharmacy" is everywhere is because they have built up brand recognition amongst casual/recreational users of ED drugs, so they get repeat custom.
Re:Irony.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What jerks (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see any compelling reason that facebook would ever give their friends lists to Apple. Is there even a theoretical benefit for facebook in doing so?
They will see the reason once the check arrives to purchase them.
Ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ironic that the most common scams on Ping right now revolve around Apple's own iPhone.
The author might want to look up the definition of irony, because I'm pretty sure this is the opposite.
Re:Does spamming still generate real profits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:maybe spamming is a ...... (Score:3, Insightful)
AC1 Wrote: "...hard steel of a bullet."
AC2 Wrote: "...soft lead of a bullet."
With FMJ you can both be right, but wouldn't you prefer the more satisfying hands on approach of an aluminum baseball bat? It has that personal touch that says: "I care."
Re:Does spamming still generate real profits? (Score:3, Insightful)
In this way, I think that spam filtering has hurt the Internet. People will rely on it over-much -- meaning that something gets past the spam filters, there is possibly a significant subset of the Internet-using population who will assume it's legit. (In this case, significant only needs to be a fraction of a percent for this to be very profitable.)
That being said, one possibility I've wondered about is that while people are paying spammers to do their thing (thus ensuring the spammers a profit), it may not really have a noticeable effect on the product sales. I could see a rather limitless market of people who tried such services once, realized it was a waste and never tried again.
I'd love to hear from someone who actual employed such "services" to find out what (if any) difference they made; if they recouped their costs; and if they tracked how many sales came from spam vs other channels.
Re:Does spamming still generate real profits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Spam filters may have hurt the Internet for the reason you state... But the alternative is wading through an inbox (or webforum, blog, etc) that is 99.999% spam.
Of the servers I've dealt with, something. Like 98% of the raw smtp traffic was spam. Without spam filters, the Internet would be unusable.
Re:Does spamming still generate real profits? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they didn't turn a profit, they wouldn't be out there.
Correction: They want to turn a profit and SPAM is a cheap way to attempt that.
The difference is that it doesn't matter if anybody buys it or not, the SPAM's already gone out.