Communication is one of the characteristics of this day and age. As the Internet is one of the easiest way to communicate, it has also become the most targeted means of communications. After websites sprung up, hackers appeared. When music CDs started to grow in popularity, the world was introduced to MP3s.
 

Blogs were quite popular until people started to make money out of them and only a few of them became known to the world, while most started posting “hilarious” YouTube virals and jokes. Others simply deleted their blogs and went on with their lives. Stars and celebrities started using blogs and social networking websites, such as MySpace or Facebook to communicate with their fans on a more personal level. Lindsay Lohan, for instance, uses MySpace regularly and posts quite often, sometimes to deny rumors or just let fans know she’s alright.

 

Long posts seem to drive readers away – or so say some statistics available online. In an attempt to promote shorter posts, Twitter was born. The concept behind Twitter is to provide a combination of social networking with micro-blogging. Users can send and receive updates – or “tweets” – in the form of messages up to 140 characters in length.

 

One celebrity that uses Twitter is pop-princess Britney Spears, whose staff is usually in charge with updating the account. However, a mysterious team of hackers has managed to hijack the Twitter account of US president-elect Barack Obama along with celebrities like, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly. The security snafu on the trendy micro-blogging site came days after a successful "phishing" scheme tricked many users into providing their usernames and logons.

 

It is unclear whether the hacked accounts were a result of that scheme, but the results were undeniably embarrassing. Obama's Twitter page, which was last used to deliver a quick victory message on election night, was updated to bring users to a survey site where they could vie to win 500 dollars in free petrol.

 

The Twitter page of Spears referred to an intimate part of her body, which it said was "about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth." Sanchez told his fans that "I am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today" while conservative O'Reilly proclaimed that he was gay.

In a blog posting, Twitter said that 33 high profile accounts had been compromised by an individual who hacked into support tools used to help account holders remember their passwords.

 

"We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue. Rick, Barack and others are now back in control of their accounts," the company said. "We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline."