Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Facebook Scams

2010scam / phishing luredead

Published September 6, 2026

Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Facebook Scams are a family of phishing and tagjacking schemes that used a fake sex tape of the pop singer as clickbait, first hitting Facebook in December 2010 and coming back in fresh formats through 2012. The lure sent users to phony video pages, hijacked their accounts to spam friends, and became one of the go-to case studies for early social-network malware.

scam memesfacebook memeshacking memescelebrity scandal memesearly 2010s memes

Overview

Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Facebook Scams are phishing and account-hijacking schemes that dangle a nonexistent sex tape of the singer as bait, then trick Facebook users into authorizing spam software or handing over their login details2. The bait mutated a lot between 2010 and 2012, but the mechanics stayed the same: a friend appears to share a scandalous video, the victim clicks, and something bad happens on the other side, whether that is a credential-stealing page, a survey wall that pays the scammer a commission, or a script the user is tricked into pasting into their address bar3.

What made the format sticky was Miley Cyrus herself. She turned 18 in late 2010, was constantly in tabloid gossip, and rumors of leaked photos and tapes were already circulating around her, so a link claiming to prove one existed did not look implausible to a lot of Facebook users4. Scammers also mixed in Facebook-native tricks like fake YouTube-styled play buttons, age-verification prompts, and the site's own tagging feature to make the lure look like organic activity from a friend3.

The scam is a textbook example of what security researchers call celebrity-bait social engineering, and it kept getting recycled because it kept working. Coverage from Hoax Slayer, Softpedia, All Facebook, Facecrooks and NBC News turned the Miley Cyrus lure into one of the most-documented Facebook scam families of the early 2010s32.

Origin & Background

Platform
Facebook
Date
2010

The first wave hit in mid-December 2010. On December 14th, 2010, Tech News Daily ran a piece titled "Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Phishing Scam Hits Facebook," describing a link that promised a Miley Cyrus sex tape and instead pushed users to a Facebook-styled login page built to harvest credentials4. Once the scammers had an account, they used it to blast the same lure at that person's friends, turning each infected user into a new source of clicks. On the same day, tech blogs Naked Security and All Facebook posted their own writeups with screenshots of the spam messages moving through news feeds14.

The timing was not random. Fake celebrity sex tapes had been used as malware bait for years by that point, including a 2008 Barack Obama email carrying Windows viruses out of Eastern Europe and a 2009 Kim Kardashian tape lure, so the Miley Cyrus version slotted into an existing playbook that scammers already knew converted well4.

How It Spread

The scam came back in a new shape on March 3rd, 2011, when All Facebook published "Warning: Miley Cyrus Scam Returns to Facebook" and described a variant that sent clickers to a fake YouTube page asking them to complete a marketing survey to "verify their age"1. The survey wall was the payload: each completed form paid the scammer an affiliate commission, with no actual video ever loading. Around the same period, IBTimes covered a parallel Twitter version pointing to a page that served malware and, if antivirus blocked the payload, quietly showed a video of a Hannah Montana look-alike instead of Cyrus4.

The biggest surge came in September 2012, when a new "Breaking news" post started riding through Facebook feeds with a doctored screenshot of Miley Cyrus. Clicking through led to a page instructing the visitor to paste a URL into their browser's address bar, which executed a script that spammed the lure out from the victim's own account. On September 28th, 2012, Softpedia reported on the campaign and published a screenshot of the scam site2. The same day, security blog Hot For Security ran a post titled "Yet Another Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Kicks Tagjacking Back Into Shape," pinning the wave's reach on abuse of Facebook's tagging feature so friends kept getting notified about a tag they never received2.

Coverage kept snowballing into October. On October 1st, 2012, scam-tracking site Facecrooks told readers to lock down their Timeline settings so tagged spam could not auto-post to their profiles2. On October 2nd, 2012, Hoax Slayer created a dedicated "Miley Cyrus 'Sex Tape' Facebook Scam" entry and NBC News picked up the story for a mainstream audience, which is roughly when the scam family peaked in public attention32.

How to Use This Meme

This is a scam family rather than a joke format, so "use" here means recognizing the pattern. The typical version shows up as a friend-tagged post or message with a lurid headline like "OMG Miley Cyrus sex tape leaked" and a thumbnail styled to look like a YouTube or Facebook video player3. Clicking usually leads to one of three payloads: a fake login page that harvests Facebook credentials, an age-verification survey wall that pays the scammer per completion, or an instruction to paste a snippet of code into the browser address bar, which runs a script that reposts the lure from your own account24. The safe response is the same across variants: do not click, untag yourself, and review app permissions in Facebook settings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Facebook Scams

2010scam / phishing luredead

Published September 6, 2026

Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Facebook Scams are a family of phishing and tagjacking schemes that used a fake sex tape of the pop singer as clickbait, first hitting Facebook in December 2010 and coming back in fresh formats through 2012. The lure sent users to phony video pages, hijacked their accounts to spam friends, and became one of the go-to case studies for early social-network malware.

scam memes facebook memes hacking memes celebrity scandal memes early 2010s memes

Overview

Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Facebook Scams are phishing and account-hijacking schemes that dangle a nonexistent sex tape of the singer as bait, then trick Facebook users into authorizing spam software or handing over their login details2. The bait mutated a lot between 2010 and 2012, but the mechanics stayed the same: a friend appears to share a scandalous video, the victim clicks, and something bad happens on the other side, whether that is a credential-stealing page, a survey wall that pays the scammer a commission, or a script the user is tricked into pasting into their address bar3.

What made the format sticky was Miley Cyrus herself. She turned 18 in late 2010, was constantly in tabloid gossip, and rumors of leaked photos and tapes were already circulating around her, so a link claiming to prove one existed did not look implausible to a lot of Facebook users4. Scammers also mixed in Facebook-native tricks like fake YouTube-styled play buttons, age-verification prompts, and the site's own tagging feature to make the lure look like organic activity from a friend3.

The scam is a textbook example of what security researchers call celebrity-bait social engineering, and it kept getting recycled because it kept working. Coverage from Hoax Slayer, Softpedia, All Facebook, Facecrooks and NBC News turned the Miley Cyrus lure into one of the most-documented Facebook scam families of the early 2010s32.

Origin & Background

Platform
Facebook
Date
2010

The first wave hit in mid-December 2010. On December 14th, 2010, Tech News Daily ran a piece titled "Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Phishing Scam Hits Facebook," describing a link that promised a Miley Cyrus sex tape and instead pushed users to a Facebook-styled login page built to harvest credentials4. Once the scammers had an account, they used it to blast the same lure at that person's friends, turning each infected user into a new source of clicks. On the same day, tech blogs Naked Security and All Facebook posted their own writeups with screenshots of the spam messages moving through news feeds14.

The timing was not random. Fake celebrity sex tapes had been used as malware bait for years by that point, including a 2008 Barack Obama email carrying Windows viruses out of Eastern Europe and a 2009 Kim Kardashian tape lure, so the Miley Cyrus version slotted into an existing playbook that scammers already knew converted well4.

How It Spread

The scam came back in a new shape on March 3rd, 2011, when All Facebook published "Warning: Miley Cyrus Scam Returns to Facebook" and described a variant that sent clickers to a fake YouTube page asking them to complete a marketing survey to "verify their age"1. The survey wall was the payload: each completed form paid the scammer an affiliate commission, with no actual video ever loading. Around the same period, IBTimes covered a parallel Twitter version pointing to a page that served malware and, if antivirus blocked the payload, quietly showed a video of a Hannah Montana look-alike instead of Cyrus4.

The biggest surge came in September 2012, when a new "Breaking news" post started riding through Facebook feeds with a doctored screenshot of Miley Cyrus. Clicking through led to a page instructing the visitor to paste a URL into their browser's address bar, which executed a script that spammed the lure out from the victim's own account. On September 28th, 2012, Softpedia reported on the campaign and published a screenshot of the scam site2. The same day, security blog Hot For Security ran a post titled "Yet Another Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Kicks Tagjacking Back Into Shape," pinning the wave's reach on abuse of Facebook's tagging feature so friends kept getting notified about a tag they never received2.

Coverage kept snowballing into October. On October 1st, 2012, scam-tracking site Facecrooks told readers to lock down their Timeline settings so tagged spam could not auto-post to their profiles2. On October 2nd, 2012, Hoax Slayer created a dedicated "Miley Cyrus 'Sex Tape' Facebook Scam" entry and NBC News picked up the story for a mainstream audience, which is roughly when the scam family peaked in public attention32.

How to Use This Meme

This is a scam family rather than a joke format, so "use" here means recognizing the pattern. The typical version shows up as a friend-tagged post or message with a lurid headline like "OMG Miley Cyrus sex tape leaked" and a thumbnail styled to look like a YouTube or Facebook video player3. Clicking usually leads to one of three payloads: a fake login page that harvests Facebook credentials, an age-verification survey wall that pays the scammer per completion, or an instruction to paste a snippet of code into the browser address bar, which runs a script that reposts the lure from your own account24. The safe response is the same across variants: do not click, untag yourself, and review app permissions in Facebook settings.

Frequently Asked Questions