Beware!

I have had a painful lesson on social media security or lack of it. My Pinterest account was hacked or otherwise messed with. I don’t use it much and rarely look at my own pins. I was stunned to discover my account had been suspened: “For violating comunity standards. You have recieved an email warning.” was the note I got when I tried to sign in.

I recieved no such email and since I could no longer access my boards I had no way to find out why this had happened. I went through the Pinterest help pages and asked for an explaination. Four days in a row I reported the problem and grew increaingly allarmed when I got no repsonse. Eventualy I did a Google search for my author name linked to Pinterest and saw a whole range of my previous pins – mostly my book covers, but lurking amoung these I found a pin to my board, which I most certainly did not put there. It was an image of a young model, a non-nude but highly sexualised image.

It so happens I wrote a trilogy of novels about the subject of the exploitve use of young girls images. They were highly critical of the defiling of inocence. Two of the trilogy were called. ‘Surviving Beauty’ and ‘Beauty’s Price. There is no way on earth I would ever pin such an image on my public boards on Pinterest or anywhere else. So how did that image get on my pins?

I asked for help from Pinterest. Got none and then asked for my account to be closed and explained why. The damge done to me and my reputation might be serious and lasting so one would hope Pinterest would be interested in helping me deal with this invasion but it seems not – six messages over four days and not one response from them.

I asked Google to remove the offending image from searches linked to my name. I wait to see if they can or will do that.

As an author I must use various social media and I have always tried to be aware of possible problems and take care to protect my reputation. A horrid pin on Pinterest seemingly using my own account was not one I aniticiapted. Above all I did not expect such a serious breach to be ignored for so long by Pinterest. (Perhaps they think I am bonkers and did actually pin this image myself as kind of social media suicide.) So Pinterest users beware! Don’t expect prompt help from Pinterest and check your boards routinely for invaders.

It seems someone out there was out to get me.