Instagram Under Spam Attack by ... Tropical Fruit

Instagram has been hit by an attack from spammers promoting a miracle fruit diet. As a result, you may have seen a lot of (artfully filtered) photographs of tropical fruit in your feed today, and if those photos were coming from your account, you're going to need to change your password. The spam photos say things like, "Ever seen this stuff? I guess its super healthy, im giving it a try. I saw it on Dr Oz's show!" and link to a fake BBC page claiming tropical fruit can burn 17 lbs in 22 days, reports PC Mag.

Instagram owner Facebook says only a "small portion" of users had their accounts hacked, and its "security and spam team quickly took actions to secure the accounts involved," reports GigaOm, but the site questions whether the scale of the attack was really so small, given a strong reader reaction to the news. PC Mag reports that at least 35,000 people clicked the link, though Bitly is now showing users a warning message before it redirects them to the fake BBC article. Facebook has not yet explained how the spammers gained control of the accounts. PC Mag advises changing your password if your think your account may have been affected. (More Instagram stories.)