Justin Bieber. That was a name I had never heard of before today. Perhaps that is because I’m not a 15 year old girl who likes cutesy Canadian pop singers discovered by You Tube. I have now heard the name because his Facebook site was shown to me as a group of hackers have targeted young Justin and uploaded several extremely graphic pictures to his site.
Having been discovered by Youtube, those who don’t like his chirpy pop hits have also hacked his Youtube postings to direct his young fans to sites they are not legally allowed to view. His “My World Tour” Website was also a target of users of the 4chan picture website who rigged his “What country shall I appear live in?” poll to send Justin to North Korea.
But Justin is not the only celebrity to be targeted this way. Hannah Montana aka Miley Cyrus was forced to reassure fans that she was still alive after an internet hoax killed her off in 2008. Visitors to the singer’s YouTube page were greeted with a two-minute video of Cyrus’s single ‘Goodbye’ along with a message claiming to be from her friend Mandy Jiroux saying she had been killed in a road accident. The singer later explained that someone had hacked into her YouTube account and that the message was a prank.
Even the princess of pop herself isn’t safe! In January last year, someone hacked into Britney Spears’ Twitter account and posted a message to her 14,000 fans suggesting she had suffered a drastic physical abnormality far too rude to repeat.
It’s not always as clear as to whether hackers are at work however. Last month Paramore’s lead singer Hayley Williams sent a message to all her Twitter followers containing a topless photo of herself and claimed that her account was hacked. Her band were just about to release a new album and it generated a huge amount of traffic searching for her, so the more cynical amongst us might think she did it herself to promote the new album. Also, I don’t think the average hacker would have those photos to hand….?!
Marketing yourself online as a celebrity is clearly a no brainer nowadays but with some singers being the musical equivalent of marmite, it clearly pays to have someone manage what you are marketing.