Identity Theft News

Hackers hijack Britney Spears' TwitPic account

Monday, June 29, 2009

Hackers broke into the TwitPic accounts of Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres and other celebrities to broadcast bogus information, the Associated Press reported.

The hacked accounts were discovered Sunday after TwitPic, the largest service for posting photographs to the micro-blogging site Twitter, noticed phony messages, including one that said Spears had died.

Twitpic, which is not owned or affiliated with Twitter, said on its Twitter feed that the company had "implemented a fix for the email posting vulnerability."

Hackers have increasingly hijacked user accounts on Facebook and Twitter to spread viruses and spam and to phish other users' account information.

Web security experts say phishing attacks on social networking sites are up to 10 times more effective than those sent via email.

A recent survey found that 30 percent of users of social networks had been subject to cyberattacks. Many users leave themselves open to attacks but publishing personal information that could be used for identity theft.

Among younger users, 51 percent use the same password on multiple sites and two-thirds share personal information that may compromise online privacy, the survey found.
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