Here is what Paris Hilton’s mum should really be upset about…

Kathy Hilton, the mother of celebrity airhead Paris Hilton, is apparently incensed by an advert that compares US Presidential candidate Barack Obama to her daughter.

The advert, which forms part of the election campaign by Obama’s rival John McCain, compares Obama to celebrities such as Miss Hilton and troubled troubadour Britney Spears. Here is the video so you can make your own mind up:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiPAz8494Vs&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&fmt=18]

The advert has been something of an own-goal for John McCain, however, as Hilton’s mother – who with her husband has donated to the McCain campaign – described it as “a complete waste of the money [for] John McCain’s contributors [who] have donated to his campaign”.

Meanwhile, representatives for Paris Hilton were reported to have said, “Miss Hilton was not asked, nor did she give permission for the use of her likeness in the ad and has no further comment.” I haven’t yet heard back from Britney to find out what she thinks.

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All this fuss over a TV advert! It all seems rather quaint to me here in Britain, where party political huffing-and-puffing on television is strictly limited to tightly controlled slots.

But here’s something that Paris Hilton’s mum should definitely be upset about.. Her daughter is time and time again (click on each word for a different example) having her name sullied and her image abused not by politicians but by hackers.

Here’s an example I found in my Gmail spam quarantine just this morning:

Obviously clicking on that link is not a good idea, as it will download a malicious executable file (pretending as Adobe Flash) to your computer. Sophos detects the malware elements of this attack proactively as Mal/TibsPak and Mal/EncPk-DA.

Wouldn’t it be great if the media put as much energy warning the general public (and the young people likely to be admirers of celebrities like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie) about the dangers of clicking on links in emails like this?

Of course, it’s kind of ironic that Paris’s mum should be so upset about her daughter’s image being exploited on videotape. After all, we all know how Paris became world famous..


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "The AI Fix" and "Smashing Security" podcasts. Follow him on Bluesky and Mastodon, or drop him an email.

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