Pinterest friend or foe?

Are you familiar with Pinterest? 

According to the Pinterest website Help section: "Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes."  

I love it and "pinning" things I like to share has become a past time, one that replaced playing games on Facebook.  I encourage others to participate as well!  So I consider it friendly...HOWEVER, as with anything online, there are things to watch for...

First, you should be aware that there are pinterest users who post cool pictures of things like something yummy to eat but if you follow the link, to get to the "recipe" for example, you may face a virus.  I have a good virus protection program that is updated frequently and it has caught about 15 attempted virus attacks. If not a virus attack, sometimes I am sent to a blank page that says it requires cookies, which I ignore, or someone writes something like this "Isn't this cool, I found it while searching for MP3s"  or "Isn't this cool I found it while searching for something else". So you may end up on someone's MP3 page, which will have nothing to do with the original picture you liked and it's hard to tell what you may end up with if they say they found the pic you like while searching for something else.  If I think someone is sharing bogus pins, they seem to have this in common: when you click on their personal page and they may have a number of folders but will only one or two pins in each. Just be careful like you should with anything online. 

Feel free to comment on my blog and ask questions about what I have written. Remember there are some bad seeds out there but overall Pinterset is not a foe!  Have a great day and have fun pinning!