As the world continued to mourn the death of pop singer George Michael, Britney Spears' fans also felt their hearts stop Monday morning due to a series of tweets sent out from Sony's Music Global account. "RIP @britneyspears," read the first tweet, per TMZ (which has screenshots of the now-deleted tweets), accompanied by a crying emoji, an #RIPBritney hashtag, and a "1981-2016" birth-to-death marker. A few minutes later, a more cryptic and confusing tweet was posted: "britney spears is dead by accident! We will tell you more soon." At around the same time as those tweets were making the rounds, Bob Dylan's official Twitter account noted, "Rest in peace @britneyspears," USA Today reports. Spears' manager quickly got on the horn with CNN to let everyone know his client was indeed a victim—but of an apparent hack.
"I haven't spoken to anyone … as of yet, but I am certain their account was hacked," Adam Leber said. "Britney is fine and well." Sony added in a statement that the issue "has been rectified" and offered apologies to Spears and fans "for any confusion." TMZ points out that hacking group OurMine Security, which also reportedly broke into Netflix's account last week, posted on Sony's account minutes after the original tweets to assure everyone Britney is "still alive" and that they checked Sony's account out to make sure its security was OK after "[detecting] unusual activity." TMZ's "bottom line": "Someone should hire the people at OurMine before Russia does." (More Britney Spears stories.)
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