MySpace has been touted as almost a Messiah to the music industry over the past year, allowing people the ability to share their favorite artists with friends, listen to bands they love and discover new bands that they may never have heard before. 
Green Tea Monkeys, an indie ska/punk/reggae band from Germany, hoped to tap into MySpace's potential to achieve the success of other once no-name bands like Hawthorn Heights, Hollywood Undead and even Jack White's new baby The Raconteurs -- all were able to capitalize on the social networking site in their rise to prominence.
But what they never thought they would have to do is apologize to their entire fan base for unauthorized racist bulletins post under the band's name. "For us as a little band, it's worse when our fans won't believe in us ... to have to show people that we're not talking sh*t and that they can still believe and trust in what we're saying" they say.
Over the past couple of months, a rash of hacking has taken over MySpace, the most popular Web site since, well, the Web. The scale of the hacks has the MySpace community up in arms and is prompting people to ask when MySpace is going to step up.
The hacks are occurring through the bulletin section of each individual's MySpace profile. The extent of the hack is unknown, but as any MySpace user can tell you, in order to post a bulletin -- whether real or counterfeit - you must have access to an individual's account. That suggests that any and all information that a person has stored within their profile, including personal e-mail addresses, passwords, and e-mails, could be accessible to hackers. 
The counterfeit bulletins causing the biggest uproar are those containing defamatory racial remarks that would make the grand wizard of the KKK blush. It appears that the three most common racist posts are: "I'm Gonna Kill Y'all Ni**as," "F*ck All Y'all Ni**as!," and "Get Out of America You F*ckin Ni**as!"
Each of these appears in the bulletin section -- with the user's name attached as the author of the bulletin. That means that every single one of the user's "friends" receives this information in connection with the owner of the account, who is listed as the author. Horror stories run rampant about the extent to which people have had to defend their character under these circumstances.
There's no way to measure how long the racist impressions will resonate before users have the ability to apologize and set the record straight. But then should MySpace users have to apologize for something like this in the first place?
TMZ attempted to contact MySpace for comment. We were not successful.
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goshhh!! i hate this...sorry tom....i never really actually got why myspace kept on acting like that....well...now i know!!..we ALL do!!....i hate the stupid hackers.....all i wunna do is just talk to my friends.....whats the crime in that?? gosh....i wish i could just whack them on the head...but then agian..two wrongs dont make one right, right??
Um, i think i can tell how the hackers get into ur profile, cause my friend just told me that if u have ever tried to (download music, send a comment, send a message, im, ect.) and the message "you must be logged on to do that" appears, and u know u were already loged on, i think that's how the hackeres get ur password, from there!, also my friend says that u should deffinentily change ur password if u have seen that message, and they also say they think its someone who works for myspace, i havnt been hacked yet, but i have seen that message many tines, so i changed my password, good luck to those who ahve been hacked!
I read most of this.
Yes, I believe I've been hacked too.
Because, theres bulletins I've never even have posted.
I slept in till 12:30 today.
And, myspace had bulletins for "free ringtones,Meet singles tonight"
That were from me, and that was at 11:11am.
I was asleep.
It's happening a lot to me.
I think my myspace might've been hacked. Someone sent out some message to dozens of people that I didn't know. Once of those "pimp your profile" sites.
I a VERY rude reply from one person (possible loser?), a few thanks, some "who are you", and a "don't ever message me again". To some of them, I explained that I didn't send the message, that someone must've hacked me. Someone asked me, "Are you a virus?" I probably lost brain cells after hearing that. Hello, a virus will not answer you back. I told them that I was just a person.
>< And they wonder why I don't like people as much as I used to?
This happened to me too. It was about some porn site....I was sleeping at the time that it was posted. My friend saw it and told me about the hacking.
i got hacked a yesterday i thk but they were posting bulletins!!!! that i wouldn't have posted!!!! :(
Geesh.... enough of the Numptyness Please........
Do i have the ONLY decent brain in the entire globe here....
Anything is hackable....
Anything is beaten.....
It doesnt help either that 75% of Americans are highly gullable online and 45% of Uk are highly gullable as well according to an AOL survey a year back...
It's time to start using one thing called Common Sense....
If there's Spyware relations and JavaScript glitches or I.E. glitches @ MySpace -Simple ....
Take precautions against Hackers......
From Installing Mozilla FireFox & installing the AdBlock plugin to updatinh Java VM and XP.....
its your own fault at the end of the day for not being precautious......
This is messed up.
I'll be sitting there like "Why the hell is so-and-so telling everyone about their new ringtone" then click on the bulletin and have it merely a link to a website.
Ugh, it's so annoying.
BUT
One of my friends told me that in order to have it stop happening, all you have to do is CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD...
because the site that's posting the bulletins is a site that the person accidentally entered their username and password into, thinking it's myspace...
Give it a try I guess
I think people just need to be careful. It is pure stupidity to have simple passwords or store sensitive information in your account. I mean, it's not just the people that are trying to login to the mirror MySpace that are getting hacked. The ones' whose passwords are mynameisbob compared to 7ha04msiflsn305nmd6j3054f are a lot more likely to get hacked. And in the event that someone DOES get hacked, they need to tell their friends! The people on their list need to know if someone could have gone in and read messages that passed between parties with sensitive info in them. THE PEOPLE ON YOUR LISTS DESERVE THE TRUTH!
All I can say for what's in the bulletins is that there are a lot more important things to worry about than some racial slur. There are problems in the world that are 100 times as serious but don't get 10% of the coverage that MySpace and all it's problems get. Everything to do with MySpace is blown way out of proportion, and with good reason. It gets them 10 times the publicity and 100 times the members it would have otherwise. The media is probably paid to blow these things sky-high.
And about the terms that are used - when African Americans use terms like ni**** amongst themselves, they open the doorway for others to use that term also. It is their own fault if people use the word. They shouldn't try to act offended when a non-black calls them that, and then turn around five minutes later and call their 'homie' the same thing. They chose to make it an acceptable word; now they have to deal with the consequences.
One of the few un-gullible American brains.....:
I wanted to say jeni had a good point when she said this:
"as far as bunnycakes yeah theres problems in other countries but honestly I am tired of hearing about them too....what about our soldiers who are coming back from those godforsaken war torn countries to find no one wants them back our gov has no plans of "supporting" them if they are injured etc and like mercedes said we do have starving kids here in fact we have enough homeless starving natural americans that we should be ashamed to send anything to these other countries...."
There are enough problems with American lives - the lives of soldiers, of the familes out there who can't pay the electric bill or keep the water on or feed their kids - that it is sheer stupidity to go on and on about things like this. We're so concerned with "Oh, he said a bad word!" or "She said racist things about the black population" that it makes us a a country a laughing stock.
If the idiots in America would stop being so offended by little things like this, we could come together to fix the big problems like that ^ that everyone ignores in favor of promoting MySpace racism problems. But nooooo, we have to argue over whether the 'n' word is appropriate - and FYI, as long as they call themselves that, they give that right to all other people - or have a hissy fit because there's problems with a website. Big deal! I have a MySpace, and you know how I keep it from getting hacked?
A) I don't give out my information to ANYONE, not even friends, and CERTAINLY not over the internet
B) I change my password on a regular basis
C) I'm wary of what I put in there - if someone hacks mine, have fun with that! There's nothing in it they're going to get at that will ruin my life.
People need to be smart about these things. You don't EVER know who's on the other end of the line, from MySpace to chat rooms to forums to Ebay to anything and everything else out there. Use common sense, and don't do things you wouldn't do face-to-face. If you wouldn't walk up to a complete stranger and give them your bank account number, DON'T store it where complete strangers can get at it! Don't post your address, phone number, city, SSN, birthday - or, if you must, MAKE YOUR PROFILE PRIVATE. Simple as that.
Wizen up, guys, and use those things the good Lord gave you called BRAINS.
Well bunnycake(comment # 12), myspace was created not for some scheme to get rich quick. It was a place for people to meet and friends to be mad. the MEDIA changes the aspect of the website. When it launched around the year 2000 (im not going to look it up because it doesnt matter) it was a great site, you didnt have to deal with bogas sites or companies like yahoo, aol or friend finder sites. It brought new light to the internet, it sort of revived the internet, because the internet was heading down hill at the time. Now so many people use it as a means of keeping intouch with friends and family, that if something significant was to happen to myspace some people would somewhat hit a brick wall in the way their life has been going. and that again is why i say the MEDIA makes it look bad. yes there are bigger things in the world to deal with but its not like this topic is taking over the dealines of cnn or dateline. As for Marks (comment #15), so what if fox news or anybody bought myspace. In fact, if it would have never been bought by a big corporation then it prablably would of never got as big as it did, or not as fast; servers, memory space, traffic speed all those things are needed, and those things cost money. now about your pedophil comment. Who gives a who ya. there has and will be all sorts of ways these kinds of people will do those things. And I know for a fact that myspace has one of best child protection programs( not necessarily software based). so mark i tell you, if you have a child YOU should be watching over him or her. Now my response to the hackers, i give you an applause, because you hacked myspace. as a hacker you must be proud. ok now stop. the fun is over. yea changing a few things on someones profile can be funny but just keep it at that, ok? please i would really like to hear others comments.
Thanks Brandon
For All you people who say its "Hacking" it pretty much isnt, He is useing java scripts and etc on your accounts, He can Acess you account because he has remade the myspace login page, it looks exectaly the same but the url is a little bit different. So how he has been doing mass spreading of his scripts is becuase people give him the chance to, they spend so much time on computers but know nothing of them, if you would just take your time and look what you are doing, even tom has posted a picture od that the url should say, but no, nobody looks at it. But the best thing you can do it remake your account and watch out what links you click, on myspace, Aim or what ever, and if you play games. people saying they can give you free money if they can log onto your account and etc, or websites sposed to get you money, its all just a bunch of trojans and key loggers
I hate the hacking. Its happened to me and it is f*cking gay. I hate this!!
Don't you just love my peice of software I worked so hard to write? Hah. It's a peice of sh*t.
Here's the tip to defeat it: look at your url bar for christ's sake, and don't click any of those damn bullitens that require a login or whatever.
yea. this has been happeneing to my friend. bulletins have been posted under her name that she didnt post. thanks for this.
