Lady Gaga’s iPad Giveaway is a Monstrous Scam

Yesterday if you were looking at the Lady Gaga Twitter and Facebook pages( it’s OK, I won’t tell), you may have seen an Oprah-esque offer for free iPad 2s and free MacBooks for all of her little Monsters.

Sadly, this is all a big scam. Hackers took control of Lady Gag’s Twitter and Facebook accounts to try to steal the personal information from her 45 million little monsters with the promise of a special edition Lady Gaga iPad.

The Naked Security Blog from Sophos details the hack and shares that more than 100,000 people clicked through the link to try to claim their free Lady Gaga iPad. Maroon 5 and Blink 182 were also hacked during the same time with similar scams. While Apple hasn’t offered a special edition iPad with an artist on it, the scam was quite believable for many users.

If you followed the Lady Gaga free iPad link and entered any information or passwords I suggest changing them. It’s not yet known exactly what information was handed over, but if you were tricked into sharing any financial information, you may want to take steps to put a fraud alert on your credit account.

These attacks were well organized and lacked many of the mistakes that make it easy to spot a fraud. As you can see in the screenshot below, the Facebook account had correct spellings and used words that the original Facebook holder would use, such as Monsters for Lady Gaga and OBEY for Maroon 5.

How to avoid Twitter and Facebook Scams

This time of year is a popular time for scams like these , which hope to separate you from your money or your personal information. Here are a few steps to make sure you and your information is safe:

• Beware of links to free expensive items posted on Twitter and Facebook.
• Always look at the web address before entering personal information. Often scammers will use a misspelling or a long address that hides the real address.
• Be wary of signing up for offers or signing into sites on your smartphone, especially if you followed a link on a social network. The small screen makes it tough to see the full address, and could compromise your account.

In the end, if it is too good to be true, it probably is. There’s no sense in handing over all of your personal information for a chance at a free iPad, if it is going to cost you a lot of frustration.

Via The Verge