Britney Spears is not dead.
The Twitter accounts for Sony Music Global and Nobel laureate Bob Dylan were hacked on Monday morning, and the hacker apparently sent a hoax tweet that the pop star was "dead by accident."
The hacker collective OurMine appeared to be behind the hacks, The Verge reports. A since-deleted tweet from @SonyMusicGlobal was hashtagged #OurMine, and a tweet from @bobdylan referred to the group.
Sony Music just got hacked and tweeted that Britney Spears has died. pic.twitter.com/k6rIg14Oa9
— Music News & Facts (@musicnews_facts) December 26, 2016
Here's how the now-deleted tweets looked.
Britney Spears is alive and well, her rep tells CNN. It appears @SonyMusicGlobal erroneously tweeted her death. Sony rep says no comment
— AnneClaire Stapleton (@AnneClaireCNN) December 26, 2016
A representative quickly sorted things out.
Is that Sony handle a parody? It's got the blue tick.
— Ayorinde 🇳🇬 (@OtherBukowski) December 26, 2016
Make it stop, please. Not Britney Spears.
But not before everyone had a moment of panic.
OurMine has a track record of high-profile hacks, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Buzzfeed -- and more recently, Netflix and Marvel.
Sony Music: Britney Spears Is Dead
— JIMI ANTWON (@JiMiAntwon) December 26, 2016
Britney Spears: pic.twitter.com/tivxJ9VHwW
A least one person was emotionally unprepared to deal with another celebrity death.
Hoping that Britney Spears death tweet from Sony isn't some plan to go viral and drop a single I will quit Twitter.
— Gloku (@FazeMiyake) December 26, 2016
Others, of course, suspected a broader conspiracy.
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