14 DAY TRIAL // Since December, American rapper Kanye West has been the target of several hack and online impersonation attacks. The singer's Gmail and MySpace accounts have been compromised, while fake Twitter and Skype accounts have been set up in his e-mail.
Kanye West has posted on his official blog that he's had it with all these hacking attacks and false rumors about him being spread online. “Please I beg you, give me a break!!!!! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let me be great!!! Who have I hurt so bad that they want to destroy me? Who have I ever spoke about so negatively?,” the rapper pleads on his blog.
This comes after a time back in December when online phranksters caused a conflict between West and Stephen Colbert, after defamatory messages about the Comedy Central host were posted from a Twitter account allegedly belonging to the singer. The conflict stopped after Kanye denied owning the account.
More recently, a rumor about a controversial interview, in which the artist was considering a career in the adult entertainment industry, has been posted on the forum of AllHipHop magazine. The hearsay was picked up by other news agencies and passed on as true. The fake interview suggested that the rapper would be open to playing a role in such an explicit content movie, even with a vastly male cast.
The incident could be connected with the fact that the singer's personal e-mail was compromised. “Now somebody has been hacking into my MySpace and somebody's actually hacked into my personal Gmail account and has been emailing people from it... Hey world I no longer have a Gmail!,” Kanye announces.
In addition, West writes that he has found multiple fake accounts on Skype set up in his name. “I found out I had twelve unauthorized Skype accounts under my name!!!,” the rapper explains. “Welcome to Kanye West world! ... It's not official,” he ironically adds, suggesting that nothing about him that appears on-line can be believed anymore.
“Everyone who has an online presence needs to take great care to ensure that their accounts are not compromised, and their passwords are not guessed. Unfortunately celebrities, however glamorous their wardrobe, are just as human as the rest of us – and just as likely to be [sic] make a foolish mistake when it comes to properly securing their online accounts,” Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for anti-virus vendor Sophos, comments.
Other celebrities have fallen victims to hackers as well, some of them even multiple times. Such was the case of Paris Hilton, who had her official website, Facebook and T-mobile accounts hacked on separate occasions. Fake rumors about the death of teen Disney movie star Miley Cyrus were spread through her hacked YouTube account. Politicians made no exception to the rule, as Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, was the victim of an online banking fraud, while the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, had her Yahoo! e-mail account hacked and private conversions posted on the Internet.