Top 10 Celebrity Tech Mishaps and Lessons Learned from Them

Crime: Botched direct message on Twitter. What Happened: Sheen fell victim to something that plagues many a Twitter user and inadvertently publicly tweeted his personal phone number when he intended to private message it to Justin Bieber. Lesson Learned: To send a direct message you actually have to go into the message section of Twitter and address the message to the person you are trying to reach. A direct message is NOT when you reply to someone’s tweet with the reply button within the Twitter timeline. As a guideline, to communicate private information, you may want to use a more secure communication method.

Crime: Creating a fake Facebook page What Happened: While researching his role in The Social Network, Eisenberg created a fake Facebook profile under the name of playwright and host of NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!,” Peter Sagal. Eisenberg eventually deleted the fake Sagal account but confessed everything to him during an interview on the show. Eisenberg apparently got a taste of his own medicine when several people created fake Facebook pages under his name. Lesson Learned: Only create social media pages under your own name and identity. Public figures can create verified fan pages on Facebook to avoid having a personal profile. You can also request to have fake profiles removed by contacting Facebook.

Crime: Facebook death scam What Happened: A scam claiming Lady Gaga was found dead in a hotel room was the work of some crafty Facebook hackers. Clicking on the story sent a spam “like” to your Facebook page. Lesson Learned: This has been a problem for celebrities like Heidi Klum, deemed the most dangerous celebrity on the Internet due to the amount of malware linked to her name. There’s not much brands or people can do to prevent their identity from being misused, but you can take steps to avoid passing on this kind of spam. Checking the source isn’t always foolproof (the Gaga story appeared to be on the BBC website). Free tools, such as SiteAdvisor or LinkScanner, protect against malicious websites.