The spam tweets have been removed and QPS representatives apologized for the incident

Aug 19, 2013 09:51 GMT  ·  By

The official Media Unit Twitter account of the Queensland Police Service (QPS) in Australia has been hijacked by spammers over the weekend. The hackers posted tweets that contained links pointing to shady websites.

“Sorry folks, yes some tech issues my end, if only they used their computers skills for good and not evil or at least a funny pun,” QPS representatives said on Twitter.

“Nobody likes spam. Nobody. Sorry for bombardment folks. We're cleaning the gremlins out of our system as we speak,” the QPS Media Unit later added.

A lot of high-profile Twitter accounts have been hijacked by spammers over the past period. In most cases, cybercriminals use the compromised accounts to lure unsuspecting users to websites set up to advertise miracle diets.

Last week, the Twitter account of American actor Kevin Bacon was compromised and abused to trick internauts into going to a phishing website.