Britney, Miley, Ellen not dead

Don't be fooled by celebrity death hoaxes.

While several well-known celebrities have died recently, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres are not among them.

A message posted on Britney Spears' Twitter page saying the singer had died has been blamed on hackers, according to the London Telegraph .

Fake messages were sent from Twitpic accounts belonging to Spears and DeGeneres prompting the service to be shut down, the Associated Press reported.

Twitpic, a supplementary program used on the online messaging site Twitter to allow people to share photos, said hackers had exploited a "vulnerability" of the program. The company shut down the service and said it was "implementing a fix immediately."

Teen singer and actress Miley Cyrus was also caught up in the death rumors this week. She was also rumored to have died in a car accident last September.

Celebrity death hoaxes have been all over the Internet since Michael Jackon's sudden death on Thursday. Almost immediately after Jackson died, rumors that actors Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum had died began circulating. Some reports even had New Zealand police verifying that Goldblum had fallen to his death on a movie set in that country. His publicist said Goldblum was in Los Angeles the entire time.

Hollywood and political death hoaxes are nothing new. They go as far back as the days of Benjamin Franklin and include people from all walks of life such as Eminem, Margaret Thatcher and Will Ferrell.