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Apple's Ping Is 'Drowning' in Spam and Plagued With Celebrity Imitators

by Terrence O'Brien on September 3, 2010 at 12:15 PM

Ping Spam
"Ping is drowning in scams and spams." Or, at least that's the claim from security firm Sophos, which has been monitoring Apple's new social network closely since it launched on Wednesday. According to Sophos, Ping has no spam or URL filtering tools in place, giving ne'er-do-wells free rein of the service. The only requirement for joining Ping is an iTunes account, which has no screening in place and doesn't require a credit card to sign up. Oddly, Apple is filtering user photos, though it's apparently using a manual approval process to keep offensive images out of the mix.

Links to surveys promising free iPads are just part of the problem. Like Twitter in its early days, Ping has already been inundated with fake celebrity accounts, including ones for Ben Folds and Mark Zuckerberg. If Apple hopes to keep Ping from turning into a wasteland of the Web's undesirables, it's going to have to institute some form of verification (especially since celebrity participation is one of its selling points) and institute some form of filtering. Perhaps Apple wasn't prepared for the harsh reality of running its own social network. Next time, maybe Jobs will just decide to play nice with Zuck.

Do you use Ping?
Yes97 (2.8%)
No3410 (97.2%)

Tags: apple, apple ping, ApplePing, itunes, itunes 10, Itunes10, ping, ping spam, PingSpam, Sophos, spam, top

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