Lady Gaga’s fans, whom she affectionately refers to as her “little monsters”, were hit with an interesting promise from their mother monster via Twitter.
The pop star’s Twitter account was hacked and the tweet in question that went out to her 17 million monsters said “FREE iPad 2s to each one of you in the spirit of the holidays.”
After a number of redirects, the link ultimately leads to a survey scam that is designed to harvest personal information.
The Twitter community has responded by sharing the fact that Lady Gaga’s account shouldn’t be trusted. This led to #stophackinggaga as a trending Twitter topic at the time this post was written.
Similarly, a scam on the singer’s Facebook page fooled many fans into clicking the link to win an iPad. The contest rules and registration were presented as a link to a Blogspot page, according to Graham Cluley from the security firm Sophos, who spotted the scam.
The presence of the fake iPad offer didn’t go unnoticed, and was taken down within an hour.
“Lady Gaga’s new iPad comes out in 3 days! So for the next 72 hours we will be hosting a massive giveaway to all the Mother Monster fans. Sign up and receive your special Lady Gaga edition iPad in time for the Holidays! For contest rules and registration visit the link below,” a Sophos blog post quoted the scammers as saying.
But innocent fans were in for a shock as the scam link directed them to a site asking for their personal information.
According to msnbc.com, “Lady Gaga’s Twitter account had been hijacked to promote the same fake iPad scam. Lady Gaga herself later tweeted, ‘Phew. The hacking is over! And just in time, I’m on my way to Japan! So excited to spend Xmastime with my TokyoMonsters!’”
Lady Gaga is one of many celebrities whose Twitter account has been hacked.
British comic actor Simon Pegg, star of movies such as “Shaun of the Dead”, “Hot Fuzz”, and most recently the alien comedy “Paul”, was Twitter-hacked earlier this year, a hack looking to spread malware to his 1.2 million followers.
The Twitter message that went out said “Download the new ‘Paul’ Sceen Saver [LINK] after download right click and press test to install.” Of course, the link was bogus and a Trojan horse was hiding in the executable file.
Michelle Amodio is a TechZone360 contributor. She has helped promote companies and groups in all industries, from technology to banking to professional roller derby. She holds a bachelor's degree in Writing from Endicott College and currently works in marketing, journalism, and public relations as a freelancer.Edited by
Jennifer Russell