How one man crippled the internet for a while?
The day Michael Jackson died, it seemed as though the world stopped spinning, people stopped breathing, and as long wave of mourning, grief, anger, passion and love washed over every medium of communication. The World Wide Web was no different. Within the first few hour of his death, people from all over the world logged in (night or day) to verify the cause and the time of his death.
Ironically, the news of his death was broken by a celebrity gossip website named TMZ instead of a reliable news source. TMZ received a tip-off by paramedic who had been at the singer’s home in response to an emergency call.
Very soon, search engines, current affairs websites, celebrity gossip and other Michael Jackson fans clubs, portals and forum trembled and buckled under pressure from the large volume of users. The Michael Jackson search queries logged by this huge number of users were rated “volcanic” by the Google trend page. Further more, the sudden rise in traffic led some employee at Google to believe that they are under attack.
As soonn as reliable current affairs websites confirms the entertainer’s death, people felt the need to vent their emotions somewhere and what better place could there be facebook and twitter? Of course, the sheer volume of people using twitter caused it to slow down. Facebook, on the other hand, was flooded with status updates, quizzes, groups and links to Michael Jackson related stories.
Although AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo flamed out one by one; users were still famished for more Michael Jackson updates. As a result people flitted from one website to the other. Some found his previous videos on the youtube and other are reading about his whole life and past performances. It seemed that every move the renowned moonwalker had made in his personal and professional life was once again being questioned. Although this turn of events was heart breaking for most people, it was a golden opportunity for scammers, hackers and internet con artists. Within the first 24 hour of his death people start registering for Michael Jackson domain names. The more bizarre the domain name, the more likely it was to get hit. Some of the crazy domain names registered includes michaeljacksonalive.com, michaeljackson-conspiracy.com, whopoisonedmichaeljackson.com, and michaeljacksonisfacking.com.
Spammers were busy sending e-mails with catchy subjects that were bound to be opened. Phrases such as “Michael Jackson’s last work” or “Michael Jackson’s autopsy results” garnished e-mails that had the ability to launch malware attack on the users.
Michael Jackson’s death has left us all some valuable lessons. Both small and large websites and search engines need to come up with contingency plans and build infrastructure that can withstand such load. Internet users on the others hand, need to be wary of online scams that will exploit any event or opportunity to deceive innocent users. Most of all, this has taught us that it doesn’t take a nuclear bomb, a suicide attack or an alien invasion to take down something as powerful as the internet, just a celebrity dying will do it.
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