iCloud Hacked? Celebrity Nudes Leaked Online
Today is not a good day for cloud storage. Apple’s iCloud was one of several online backup services that have been targeted and exploited, leading to an undetermined number of nude celebrity photos leaking to the internet. It does not appear to be a blanket hack, but a deliberate target of female celebrities, including Kate Upton and Jennifer Lawrence. No particular reason those names were chosen. At any rate, this has caused the dark side of the internet to spread these images and videos all over.
Mary Winstead has received a lot of attention from her comments on Twitter:
To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves.
— Mary E. Winstead (@M_E_Winstead) August 31, 2014
Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this. Feeling for everyone who got hacked.
— Mary E. Winstead (@M_E_Winstead) August 31, 2014
Aside from the fact that someone shouldn’t have to deal with having their private information leaked on the internet, one interesting thing that she noted was that these images were “deleted long ago”. Unfortunately, when files are deleted on the original device, it does not necessarily mean that the backups were deleted.
This is just one example of how your private information isn’t necessarily as private as you think. All the major tech companies right now have some sort of online backup and image upload service. Apple has iCloud, Google has multiple online backup methods, there’s Dropbox, and Facebook really wants to upload your pictures for you. With all of these services being so easy to use, who are you trusting with your information? The better question is, what are you doing to keep your information secure? You’re only as good as your weakest link. For the internet, your weakest link is generally going to be the passwords you use. Second to that would be how you browse the internet. By this, I’m referring to using a secure web browser and not falling for scams.
I would suggest that everyone take a look at where and how you store your private information. Do you use the same password for more than one site? Is your password a family member’s name (pets included), phone number, address, city, or even your own name? Or worse, is your password in a top 25 list? If someone can guess your password, that’s not good. If they have access to your email, then they can potentially access your other accounts through password resets. This may not be what happened with the backup services that were targeted this week, but it’s very plausible.
This is one of the many reasons I use the free service, LastPass, to generate random, secure passwords for websites. My passwords are securely stored and require two-step verification to get access to them.
What are your thoughts on the situation?
