What better way to remind yourself of the importance of online security and your own privacy than to see someone else’s get exposed. That’s exactly what’s happening lately, with the celebrities being hacked everywhere you look. This is a good news for celebrity watchers, and pretty much no one else since nobody likes privacy breaches, and especially when you’ve got a reputation to uphold.
Even though there’s still a lot that’s unclear and many details are pretty sketchy, some of the things that were obviously not supposed to emerge have done just that. So, let’s see how exactly did these celebrities get exposed, and what is it that you can do to prevent something similar happening to you.
iCloud Hack
If you’re interested in the lives of the famous and you like following the celebrity-based headlines, then you’ve probably already aware of the recent scandal that occurred when about 100 female celebrities got their private photos published on the internet. The affected celebrities include Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Lawrence, Ariana Grande and many others.
The images of these stars were hacked from their personal iCloud accounts, and even though Apple denies that any breaches have been made, it’s believed that the iClouds were hacked through their iPhones. A lot of the content are naked photos of the Hollywood movie stars, singers and alike, and after the hack, the pictures were published anonymously on 4chan, the image-based bulletin board.
It’s not known for how long was this photo collection being built, nor do we know whether the images can still be accessed to, as one of the celebrity victims Mary Elizabeth Winstead claims that her pictures were deleted a long time ago. Jennifer Lawrence’s spokesperson has called this security breach “a flagrant violation of privacy”.
The law enforcement officials are employed by Apple, and the penalty for this breach is likely to be a lengthy prison sentence. We know that back in 2012, a man got a 10-year sentence for hacking some celebrities email accounts, including those of Mila Kunis and Scarlett Johansson. A similar penalty is probably awaiting this culprit as soon as he or she gets caught.
It’s speculated that this may have happened as a result of a breach in Apple’s security systems. In their official statement, Apple has denied such speculation and said that the phishing techniques are to be blamed. They also mentioned that the attack probably targeted the victims through their passwords, usernames, and security questions and that those things aren’t that hard to figure out with the media sharing every bit of the victim’s personal lives.
So, now that we know this, here are three things that you can do to prevent this from happening to you too:
1. Think Twice About what you share
The first one is an obvious one, and that is to be careful what you share. For example, Jennifer Lawrence told the Time Magazine the fact that there was a key word in her email address, and even this smallest clue was enough for some hacker somewhere to figure out this first valuable piece of information that’s needed in order to breach her account. Now, you may not have a public forum like her and other targeted celebrities, but the info you post online can still be used to target you for any other reason. You should probably keep private as much of your security details as possible, in order to avoid being targeted.
But there’s more than just emails that you should be careful of sharing. Your birthday and similar facts about you and your life could also be used to hack you and breach your systems. For example, someone in possession of those key information about you could simply go to the “forgot my password” option that almost every system has these days, and the providers would allow them access.
When it comes to celebrities and public figures, a lot of this kind of information are public knowledge. You, on the other hand, don’t have to give hackers an easy way in. Keep your data hidden and be as selective as possible when sharing your personal info online. Also, when choosing your passwords and security questions, don’t use terms connected to things you’re passionate about, but instead put a random entry and decrease the chance of being hacked.
2. Secure Your Password
Apple claims that you can secure your account by enabling the two-step verification system and using the long, strong passwords. Your password should contain 10 characters or more to be considered strong and hard to breach. You’d do well to mix uppercase and lowercase letters, but also symbols, numbers, and similar characters.
The other part of your password security is the two-step verification. It uses a different, separate channel, for example, SMS sent to your phone. You get a verification code that you must insert while accessing your account, and if you ever get the code to your phone while you’re not trying to log in yourself, you’ll know that someone is trying to hack you.
You should also use different passwords for different accounts. Memorizing different passwords for every social network and profile can be a bother for you, but if you put the same password on every one of your accounts and someone figures it out, you’ll be entirely at their mercy. The passwords should also be as different as possible since it’ easy for hackers to figure out the word that you always use, and for example, simply change the numbers at the end of it.
3. More Secure Online Habits
There are many ways to access the private data, and the hackers could easily have snooped on the unprotected WiFi and enter using that method. That’s why it’d be a good idea to start using VPNs like
TorGuard in your everyday life, and secure both your privacy and your devices. VPNs are used to provide another layer of protection, they can encrypt your data flow, mask your IP address and much more, and the extra security measure doesn’t hurt.
You should also often review the permissions on your tablets and smartphone. Mobile devices are known to automatically upload things to the Internet, and many people are unaware of these actions.
Take control of your security by putting a stop to these automatic uploads. Also, make sure that you move the photos from your phone to an external hard drive from time to time. You can then proceed to encrypt the data, and even if it gets lost or stolen, the photos and other information on it will still be safe and secured.
And finally, the most important thing to remember is that criminals can’t hack what doesn’t exist. Even though the measures we’ve mentioned will help secure your data, they may not protect you from the more skilled hackers. The ultimate privacy and online safety can’t be guaranteed, and if you worry about your data being hacked and stolen, it’s probably in your best interest to not upload it at all.
We should all learn from these incidents and do our best to prevent them from happening to us as well. That can be done by developing better safety habits, like using VPNs, changing our passwords to a stronger version and alike. It could save you from years of embarrassment that all those starlets are currently going through.
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