Britney Spears Death Hoax Explained

A morbid experiment conducted by a tech-savvy prankster brought the most hits for the eye-popping fake headline, "Singer Britney Spears Killed in Car Accident," on CNN.com over the weekend.

The article received more than 150,000 hits over a 12-hour period on the AOL Time Warner owned news site Sunday afternoon.

The prank was perpetrated by one Tim Fries, a Saginaw, Michigan based online comic strip artist. Fries said that he was conducting research as to how far and fast misleading information travels on the Web. He claimed that he basically tested the public's trust in the Internet for finding breaking news. A particularly poignant matter in light of what is going on with respect to America's war on terrorism.

"With the recent terrorist attacks and such an increasing reliance on the Internet as a trusted news source, misinformation could prove to be a powerful weapon," said Fries, who has removed the parody page from the Internet.

So, how was it done? According to InternetNews.com, Fries used a mock up of a CNN.com Web page at an external site and exploited a peculiarity in how Web browsers handle URLs. Fries launched the Spears death hoax by distributing a specially crafted URL to three users of AOL's Instant Messenger chat software.

A CNN.com spokesperson has said the bug has been fixed. According to InternetNews.com, the site was a carbon copy of CNN.com's Web design and writing style with a few exceptions. Those who didn't read the fine line of the copyright notice would have smelled something funny.

At the bottom of the faux report was a line, which read "Copyright 2001 The Disassociated Press," which was linked to a page explaining the parody.