December 20, 2011, 12:34 PM —
Lady Gaga and Monster announce Project RED Heartbeats and RED Beats Solo at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
flickr/Domain Barnyard
Over 100,000 Lady Gaga fans were hit by the pervasive "click here to win a free iPad 2!" scam Monday after hackers infiltrated the pop star's Twitter and Facebook accounts.
The hackers messaged Gaga's over 17 million Twitter followers and more than 45 million Facebook fans with the promise of "special Lady Gaga edition" iPads and free MacBooks as long as they handed over personal details on a shady BlogSpot site.
The offending posts and phishing site have been removed, but not before over 100,000 Little Monsters unwittingly sold themselves to a scam, according to Web statistics data pulled by the BBC.
Lady Gaga acknowledged the hacks on both Twitter and Facebook by simply saying "Phew. The hacking is over!" before returning to business as usual. And judging from the tone of their Facebook comments, which (all sics aside) ranged from "Lilly your what anyone would call (illiterate)" to "jah shut da hel up lily crazy B*t**," fans didn't give too much credence to the hack either.
It'd be foolish for me to assume that, since Lady Gaga herself geeks out, her fans would be tech savvy enough to recognize an obvious and overplayed scam when they saw one. So I won't assume that. Promise. I'll just hope nobody's expecting a free iPad 2 anytime soon.
