British tabloid The Sun was either duped, or didn’t bother to check into it too carefully. In case you missed the short-lived buzz, The Sun reported that FoxNews.com was reporting that a sex tape showing a bald Britney Spears engaged in a multi-tasking event (what? Sexathlon, then?) with two girls and a guy while imbibing cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol.

A helluva night by anyone’s standards.

And the blogosphere got very excited, and then very disappointed, typical when dealing with Britney’s career in general. I looked and looked – you know, for strictly journalistic purposes – but there was nary a link nor censored screenshot to be found of the video anywhere. There were only links to the Sun’s article, and a few screenshots of the FoxNews.com report.

Only, it wasn’t really FoxNews.com that reported it – just a look-alike designed by, well, who knows? It was convincing though. The page was spoofed from this Britney/Dr. Phil article, but the URL isn’t structured the way Fox usually does it, and there’s no Fox icon like there should be in the URL bar.

The URL has a dozen or so (an exaggeration) subdomains that resolve finally to a ccTLD for Samoa. I’m not going to link to it, because it might have something contagious in it.
Contrary to a few blog commentator reports, it doesn’t look like FoxNews.com was hacked, but rather effectively spoofed.

Effectively enough to put one over on The Sun, anyway.