The newest Internet craze, ‘TheFappening’, refers to the numerous nude celebrity photographs which were leaked onto websites without the consent of the subjects. This mass invasion of privacy has had Hollywood abuzz and Internet users around the globe searching for the uncensored photos.
In August of 2014, a group claiming to be affiliated with Anonymous hackers launched #TheFappening or ‘CelebGate’ as it is now known online; it was a huge collection of iCloud-stored nude photographs of popular female celebrities that had been leaked on popular file-sharing sites such as 4chan and Reddit. Notable celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Kate Upton and Kim Kardashian were among some of those victims whose personal photographs made their way onto the web at large.
This disturbing news about personal photos being blatantly accessed without permission has brought to light many questions and ethical dilemmas surrounding cyber security and illegal photo dissemination. It became instantly apparent that somebody had exposed private files from these celebs’ cloud storage accounts which contained highly sensitive information not meant to be made public; as if their individual Los Angeles-styled homes weren’t enough access already!
When considered together with big-name stars becoming frequent prey for robotic scripts and other forms of organised hacking attacks, this pales in comparison. With Apple having initially admitted they hadn’t heard any complaints from its iCloud users regarding such theft or unauthorised access to accounts, they soon identified a major security flaw in their system requiring them to review internal procedures right away. As a result this prompted greater investment into improved iCloud protocols making it more secure overall for its millions of subscribers worldwide; especially making sure that none of them become easy targets for developing sophisticated scripts accessing celebrity accounts again in the future.
As additional protection measures are put into place by Apple in order protect its customers’ data from vulnerabilities like ‘TheFappening’, extra precautions should also be taken by anybody using cloud storage for private data – including backing up valuable information on offline devices too just in case – because there are no guarantees that your personal information will remain safe no matter how hard companies try to improve safety protocols, no matter how much technology advances on an ongoing basis or exactly what kind legal ramifications are handed out towards perpetrators when apprehended.