First, there were the Twitter phishing attacks that looked like direct messages from your friends offering you a chance to win an iPhone. Now some big-shot Twitter accounts appear to have been accessed by pranksters: FOX News’, CNN’s Rick Sanchez’ and Britney Spears’ accounts have all had tweets posted to them by unauthorized parties.

These tweets have since been deleted, but their images have been saved in a number of places, including a Flickr photoset by Mat Honan and on TechCrunch.

Here’s an image of the unauthorized post on Britney’s Twitter account. The pusillanimous bowlderizers over at TechCrunch blurred out the word “vagina” in their screenshot of the posting, but we don’t do that sort of thing here at Global Nerdy:

Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.

Michael Arrington, you big girl’s blouse, they use the word “vagina” on prime time TV – for starters, on Family Guy. Also, thanks to Britney’s now legendary bad judgement and celebrity blogs, we’ve all seen said vagina anyway [link not safe for work!].

Here’s the unauthorized post on Rick Sanchez’ Twitter account:

Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.

And my favourite, the unauthorized post on FOX News’ Twitter account that tells the shocking truth of about falafel-and-loofah fetishist and screaming head Bill O’Reilly:

Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.

Anyhow, you might not be a celebrity, but it still might be a good idea to update your Twitter password if it’s something easily cracked, like a word that can be found in the dictionary.