Weightloss Spam Uses Celebrity Tags on Tumblr to Lure Unsuspecting Users

We'd give you a biased answer if you ask us which celebrity blog on the interwebs is the best, because we know what we're bringing to the table. If you check for celeb-related news and tidbits on blogs hosted on Tumblr, then you're in for an unpleasant experience.

Spammers have set their sights on the blogging platform and are hogging celebrity tags so their posts riddled with weightloss ads and spam will appear whenever you search for your favorite celeb.

GFI Labs has reported spotting posts on Tumblr that are pushing a weightloss supplement product called "raspberry ketone." The spammers are adding celebrity tags to their posts so they'll appear when users do a search of them on the site, including Keira Knightley, Shakira, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Selena Gomez, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus,  Lindsay Lohan, Madonna, Anne Hathaway and Kim Kardashian.

The spam accounts are made up of a random first name followed by a series of numbers, like nancy57559(dot)tumblr(dot)com.

They are making quite a lot of spam posts right now – we looked at three random accounts, and between them they'd posted up 49 pieces of spam in the last hour leading to the weightloss site (12, 16 and 21 respectively). Given that there are 19 spam accounts alone in the first 3 pages of the Keira tag, that's a whole lot of posting going on.

-- Chris Boyd, security expert from GFI Labs

These spam posts link to a website that's selling the raspberry ketone supplement. The silver lining is that the site isn't pushing any malware or Trojans, so you don't have to worry about your computer getting compromised if you accidentally clicked on to the site.