According to Dmitry Bestuzhev, head of Kaspersky Lab's global research and analysis team in Latin America, he started tracking tweets on the subject of Taylor's death on Wednesday morning.
"Bit.ly statistics show the same short URL has been recycled since November 2010 for different on-click fraud campaigns (pay per traffic) related to the same affiliate program", he noted in his security blog.
Within the space of a few hours, Bestuzhev says that Twitter users from 48 different countries clicked on the link and he has posted the stats online.
The take-home from this saga, he goes on to say, is that cybercriminals don’t care about morals and ethics.
"Money is money for them and topics like celebrity deaths, natural disasters and other critical situations have been used without any regret", he says.
The Kaspersky researcher adds that, if you are not infected by malware, this does not mean you cannot be a victim, as cybercriminals can still make money from your clicks on these social engineering campaigns.
"The losses from cybercrime are growing year to year. These statistics from the FBI are further confirmation", he said.