Even from the after life MJ is causing some problems. Granted it is really not his fault, but he is dead, so we can blame him all we want. It all started with the news of his death. Turns out more people are like me than I thought, when hearing about a major story they turn to Google for the answers.

It was so many searches that Google thought it was an attack on the system. According to the CNET story it took about 25 minutes before Google realized that the story was real. By the end of the day they received 16.4 million visitors, the most of any story in history.

Then the malware and spam starts, from V3:

The message sender claims to have information about Jackson’s death that they want to share with the recipient. Although the body of the spam message does not contain any URLs or other call-to-action links, if replied to it will allow the spammer to harvest the user’s email address, said Sophos.

Rik Ferguson, senior security adviser at vendor Trend Micro, warned that any event of this magnitude would be expected to generate significant amounts of spam and malware.

“It always does – it happens with any newsworthy event, joyous or tragic, and Jackson’s death is probably up there with Elvis,” he said.

“We fully expect to see black hat SEO [search engine optimisation] activity and significant spam runs using the news as bait, because people are hungry for details.”

So watch those emails that you open. Was it Demerol that killed MJ? Your best source for info is going to be Google, not the countless emails you have with “exclusive” details.

(Via V3 and CNET)