Britney Spears Is Not Dead, Though Hackers Want You To Think She Is

A Twitter account belonging to the Sony Music Group was hacked early Monday morning and falsely reported that Britney Spears had died. One of the most horrible things about the tweet was, considering the year we've had, anyone who saw it could have easily have believed it — despite the wonky wording. This was, after all, merely hours after the death of George Michael had been confirmed. "RIP @britneyspears #RIPBritney (1981-2016)," read the first tweet posted at 8 a.m. by @SonyMusicGroup, as captured in screenshots by Billboard. The crying emoji that accompanied it seemed just a little informal for that kind of announcement. Maybe the skeleton holiday-weekend crew wasn't ready to sound official so early in the morning, one could reason. That was followed by the more suspicious: "Britney Spears is dead by accident! We will tell you more soon. #RIPBritney"

As backup, there was a tweet from Bob Dylan, of all people, that simply said, "Rest in peace @britneyspears." Tweets from both accounts then stated that they were hacked by the so-called security group OurMine. All of these tweets have since been deleted. OurMine claimed responsibility for hacking Netflix's and Marvel's Twitter accounts earlier this year as a way of advertising its services. Does this horrifying gimmick actually attract clients? Considering that Sony was hacked so severely in 2014 and the world was reeling from both the death of George Michael and the news that the Russians allegedly hacked into the presidential election, we hope most corporations choose service providers with a bit more tact. But also, Sony, please choose better passwords.