TMZ Music: MySpace HACKED!

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

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.

Bunner on MySpace.comThe 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.

Reader Comments

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46. Thanks for all of the advice! I'm too old to be up on all the ins and outs of myspace.com. My son is 34 and contacted an attorney friend of his and he suggested contacting the authorities. My son also considers himself too old to have a myspace account and was completely unfamiliar with myspace. He is a coach and one of his kids pointed it out to him.
So, a moron? No. Ignorant of the system? Yes.
Is someone mad at him? Yes, an opposing team's coach. Very juvenile, but very destructive.

Posted at 12:03PM on Jul 17th 2006 by Valerie Sigler

47. I honestly think MySpace should work a little bit harder on making site not so easy to crack into. They should also work on replying to people when they have problems! I had a question and I didn't get a reply for maybe six months, EXACTLY after I deleted my MySpace account. Was very weird.

Maybe they should make it a different process to post bulletins - I'm not smart or anything, but like a security question? Of course that'd probably annoy people. Or maybe a security question when you log in. Like ones you have when you forget your password.

All I know is I'd hate for someone to do that to my account. My real friends would know I wouldnt say anything like that, and would probably assume its not me. However, the other people lurking about that dont really know me would totally flame me.

Posted at 12:06PM on Jul 17th 2006 by Sara

48. Then if you make it "PRIVATE" then the open community like atmosphere will be gone... Then you will have another cheesy singles site... It's an online community that could be more secure, but who can complain when there's nearly 100 million people... The best thing is to never store really valuable info, or use the same password that you use on you regular e-mail account... You do need to sign in with a legit e-mail though because that is the only way to retrieve a password that's been changed by a hacker. Otherwise you and your page is screwed and forever changed never to be corrected. Hackers can't change the sign-in e-mail either unless they have access to your yahoo, hotmail or other e-amil account passwords.

Posted at 12:17PM on Jul 17th 2006 by Roger

49. Myspace has been going down hill ever since they sold out to the man. That's why we created www.communityx.net for indy bands and artist and the average person who doesn't need a glam shot to be apart of something cool.
Comx is hosts mp3s for indy bands and offers a wide variety of free promotion for anyone who signs up.

Posted at 1:45PM on Jul 17th 2006 by Communityx.net

50. You know, they say that MySpace is really bad because of all the pedophiles and how they hunt down young innocent girls and MySpace gets a bad rep because of it, but really it is often the girl's fault as well. You obviously have no idea how many girls use dirty half naked pictures of themselves as their main photo and use things like "cheap and easy" or "come and get it" or some other suggestive name. I think the hacking is bad, yes, but I think this is just another reason for people to try and give MySpace a bad name. I think by having an account it is also your own job to monitor and keep track of what you send and what gets sent in your name. The internet is a dangerous thing and everyone needs to be responsible for how they use it.

Posted at 11:41PM on Jul 17th 2006 by Erin

51. I don't really understand what all the fuss is; websites get hacked all the time. Probably since MySpace has become so popular because of the large amount of media cover on it (probably paying them to show the site), whenever something "different" happens on the site, the media swarms on it.

Posted at 9:15AM on Jul 18th 2006 by Ba-La

52. Haaa, take that nigers. Get our of America!

Posted at 4:39PM on Jul 18th 2006 by Qw

53. The hackers obviously are getting lists of people's usernames and passwords from somewhere because this happened to me like three times and then I changed my myspace password and it never occured again (it's been months).

Posted at 10:32PM on Jul 18th 2006 by Lisa

54. My account has recently been hacked to actually show pictures of promoting tatoo's and myspace website layouts. Although its not a big deal, it is annoying when one of my church friends is like, why are you posting those picturse?! Also as for monitoring and deleting these posts, they happen at what seems to be times I'm not at the computer and haven't signed onto myspace for hours. Also it's annoying to go through the bulletins and delete my own posts. They have already happened and people might have already seen what I have posted.

Posted at 11:39PM on Jul 19th 2006 by Tim

55. Well this is good to know. We just launched a local social network site , www.detroitcity.com

Posted at 2:15PM on Jul 20th 2006 by Dave

56. Comment #45

That's not true, getting hacked is getting hacked. Whether you have music or from a friends hacked bulletin. Wish up Clash and do your homework... It's this kind of ill-advised info that does nothing to contribute to the solution.

Posted at 11:12AM on Jul 21st 2006 by Roger

57. Bunnycake...you're a moron. You totally missed the point of the article. Its not about racism, its about how Myspace needs to make sure that its site is secure.

"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."

No matter what your personal opinions on a website are, the above is NOT ok and is a BIG deal.

Posted at 8:07PM on Jul 23rd 2006 by Yeah Son

58. Wow since the last time I visited TMZ I read an article claiming that TMZ.com was in part responsible for the hacks on myspace... That could explain why the letters TMZ Zone were showing up in place of the date and time on myspace messages sent and recieved by the user's. A plausable explanation since this paparazzi tabloid type media will go to whatever extent legal or illeagal to get information. Some folks just can't sit around while others enjoy more popularity than they do. If this is true I certainly hope that these losers get their sorry ass rocks off!

Posted at 8:56AM on Jul 27th 2006 by roger

59. Mostly myspace is suffering from little wannabe hackers such as those who put up 'fake' myspace login pages which just returns the username/password via form into their email. Most people don't think to check the URL when they're trying to access a page that 'looks' like the real thing. No offense, but mostly it's a bunch of kiddies who make this common mistake and I've had to warn half a dozen numerous times to change the pass ASAP to prevent this problem.

Posted at 10:42PM on Jul 30th 2006 by RC

60. Hey...this was very informative...thank you. After the big "power outtage" bulls*** weekend, I had a couple of friends tell me to crash my puter and run as many sweeps as I could. Two Trojans showed up. I changed passwords, did everything I could to fight it...so far so good. I am give up on myspace and their servers...if they can't get their s*** together...I will be residing on Lost Cherry from now on :)
Peace...and thanks again.

Posted at 4:00PM on Jul 31st 2006 by Wayne

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