14 DAY TRIAL // A hacker hijacked the 3.5 million-follower Twitter account of Gary Barlow, the lead vocalist of the British pop group Take That and former X Factor UK judge.
The hacker posted a tweet referencing the child Barlow and his wife lost back in 2012. The offensive message was quickly removed by the celebrity or by his team, but not before a lot of users saw it.
So far, Barlow hasn’t made any statement regarding the incident. The pop-star hasn’t posted any messages on Twitter over the past days since word got out that he and two other members of Take That might have to pay millions of pounds in tax after they invested in a tax avoidance scheme.
This isn’t the first time Barlow’s Twitter account is hijacked. The celebrity fell victim to hackers back in April 2012.
The social media accounts of celebrities are often hijacked, but the attacks are usually carried out by spammers who want to take advantage of the large number of followers the compromised accounts have.
Spammers rely on high-profile Twitter accounts to promote miracle weight-loss websites, or to lure internauts to all sorts of shady sites. On some occasions, such as this one, accounts are hacked by trolls who have either somehow phished the password for the targeted account, or have access to it.