New York — Popular pop singer Lady Gaga may truly admires her fans, but not to the extent of awarding each and every one of the 17 million-plus that follow her on Twitter a free iPad. Recently, the pop star has been made the scapegoat with more than 100,000 fans were hit by the pervasive “click here to win a free iPad 2!” scam early this week after hackers infiltrated the pop star’s Twitter and Facebook accounts.
The hackers used her account and delivered multiple messages to all her fans, seemingly inviting them to submit their details to win free iPad 2 tablets. Here is what one of the Tweets said: “Monsters, I’m giving away FREE iPad2’s to each one of you in the spirit of holidays.”
With the fraudulent message circulating, it seems that either Gaga had gone…well, gaga with yuletide generosity, or something was clearly up. After bit.ly updated the link to define it as “potentially problematic”–a polite way of saying “Please do not go to this spam site”–that tweet was also deleted, and a third one posted, again inviting followers to a Bit.ly-ed site with the promise of free goodies.
The pop star often addresses her fans as “monsters,” suggesting the hack was specifically directed at the singer–rather than a more general phishing attack often seen on social media networking sites.
“It is not terribly good for the brand to infuriate your fans or to put them at risk,” Graham Cluley Sophos.
The hackers messaged Gaga’s more than 17 million Twitter followers. The 25-year-old, Twitter’s most followed user, 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!” Besides, her Facebook page, which is ‘liked’ by more than 45 million fans, had earlier posted the message: “Lady Gaga’s new iPad comes out in 3 days!” and free MacBooks as long as they submitted their personal details on a shady BlogSpot site.
The shocking posts and phishing site have been removed, but not before over 100,000 Little Monsters inadvertantly sold themselves to a scam, according to Web statistics data pulled by the BBC.
According to TechCrunch, around 7,000 of Gaga’s monsters were victimized and did as their leader suggested, according to Bit.ly stats, with Twitter showing that a number of them also retweeted the offer. Gaga was not the only Twitter account hit by the hack; singers Nelly Furtado and Nichole Scherzinger were both apparently affected and offering “free” Apple products to unsuspecting followers yesterday.
Moreover, the message also contained a link to a webpage where users were greeted with a message saying: “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.”
It is, in fact, especially significant that the administrators of popular Facebook pages — which can have many millions of fans — take security seriously to reduce the possibilities of passing a scam on, Cluley wrote.