Nude pictures of Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway have leaked onto the internet.
The private naked photographs of Hathaway surfaced earlier this month and have been widely shared on sites such as Reddit, Tumblr and Twitter for the benefit of anybody who hasn’t previously found a way of using the internet to look at nude bodies.
The actress, who is currently filming a real-life “Barbie doll” movie (whatever next?), is just the latest in a long line of celebrities who have found their intimate snaps exposed online by hackers.
Who can forget 2014’s “The Fappening”, for instance, where nude photographs of more than 100 celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian, Cara Delevingne, Vanessa Hudgens, Kirsten Dunst and Ariana Grande were shared widely on the internet?
I wonder how the hackers would feel if it was their private photographs which were posted on the internet and shared widely by strangers?
I can’t imagine how it might feel for a celebrity to know that any stranger they had met might have seen naked photographs of them… And not “artistic”, airbrushed pictures taken by a professional that might have been officially approved for release, but private photos that you took for your own personal use or to share with your nearest and dearest.
It’s not just Anne Hathaway who is risks feeling humiliated by hackers at the moment. It is reported that nude photographs of other celebrities including Katherine McPhee, Miley Cyrus, Kristen Stewart, and golfer Tiger Woods and his ex Linsey Vonn have recently surfaced online.
The truth is that criminal hackers don’t have much in the way of scruples, and don’t consider the emotional impact and human cost of their activities.
That’s why all of us – celebrities and non-celebrities – should do all we can to prevent our private personal photographs from falling into the wrong hands.
That means:
- Choosing a strong, hard-to-crack password for online accounts
- Choosing a unique, different password
- Not sharing passwords with other people
- Enabling two-step verification or two-factor authentication when available, ensuring that hackers won’t be able to break into accounts by only knowing its password
- Not choosing easy-to-guess answers to secret “Forgot your password?” questions
- Being aware of phishing threats, and ensuring up-to-date security software is always being run
- Being wary of delegating others (an assistant?) from accessing online accounts on your behalf
If you want to know more about securing your web email accounts be sure to listen to this edition of the Smashing Security podcast:
Smashing Security #014: 'Protecting webmail - a Smashing Security splinter'
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts | Other... | RSS
More episodes...
I keep re-reading the article. I guess it's not there. There's nothing to say, perhaps the best method of protecting from nudes being leaked would be not to have them in the first place. They're already painting a target on their back for being famous, why tempt fate?
If it's on the web, there's a chance unauthorized access could occur.
Yes the user should increase and monitor their security as features are introduced, but what about the other end.. The punishment end. Longer prison sentences, the inability to decrease time for apologizing, or remove the minor age restrictions to time (you're obviously smart enough to understand what you're doing).
How about:
– Don't take nude photos or videos.
– If you do, don't keep them. Put your phone in airplane mode, view it, and delete them before going back online.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you don't take nude photos of yourself you will not have anything to worry about. But being young and beautiful, everyone wants to show it off and this is what happens.
These comments; holy moly.
I know, right? It's the internet troll version of the Three Stooges : blame the victim, miss the point, and the morality police, only not funny.