Why were these weird accounts following a bunch of people on Spotify?
by Jay Peters from The Verge - All Posts on (#6FH7X)
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Somebody sent a strange tip about Spotify to The Verge on Wednesday.
The email, with the subject line Spotify Hackers," claimed that Every English account in America has two new followers, ! lucasrpx and ! vitornovaes." The tipster followed up two minutes later to share a screenshot showing the profile pictures from the accounts, which featured characters from the Studio Ghibli movie Ponyo. Weird stuff.
This seemed pretty innocuous - we doubted they were hackers - but we had to investigate. It was easy to disprove that the accounts followed every English account in America"; the accounts were not following me. (Though full disclosure that I've been an Apple Music user for years.) But the accounts did follow two other Verge staffers,...