As reported on September 1st, 2014, dozens of A-list celebrities had their private photographs of them in various states of undress hacked from their person files and "clouds" and were put on 4chan. Some are fake, as Victoria Justice claimed that her's on Twitter were fake. Some are in fact real. As representives for Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton told the media that their's are real, and that the hacker and everyone with copies of the illegally posted photos will be brought to justice to the fullest extent. This scandal has brought the topic of privacy and security to my mind as well as some thought on the celebrities who had real nude photos, because I can imagine all the dirty 12 year olds in the YouTube comment section making fun of Katniss's "parts." 

 We've all as modern teens have most likely had it shoved down our heads in middle school all the tricks of internet predators and that if we put anything on social media, or in the case of these celebrities, our smartphones or computers in general that even when deleted it's still out there. Right there, in the "cloud." The "cloud" is really cloud storage, which according to Wikipedia, is "a model of data storage where the digital data is stored in logical pools." I don't know how to translate that to common English and I don't know much of it. But experts say that hackers may have accessed the women's photos through the app "Find My iPhone" through a vulnerability involving a password guessing brute-force service called "iBrute." Apple apparently protects against brute-force, but failed on this app. Obviously, otherwise poor Jen and Kate would be able to get some sleep without the image of dirty old men looking at their breasts and drooling on their keyboards. 

This raises questions. Like "How do I prevent this from happening to me?" Well, Miss Don'tHaveDoThisWould say, don't take nude pics! I can see people judging these celebrities on taking them in the first place and s***shamming them, especially the ones with influence on us and younger kids like Ariana Grande, who's still on Nick and is becoming a huge singer, and Jennifer Lawrence, the face of the rebellion and every teen girl's fantasy best friend including your's truely. But not all of them are that kind of irresponsible Miley-type and believed in the illusion that is privacy and security (tee hee, title reference). We shouldn't judge them on their personal life, as kinky as it can be, but we should sympathize that their rights were violated. They're people too, and imagine you're Mary E. Winstead finding out a silly sexy photo of you and your husband in the privacy in your home that was "deleted" long ago is now in public view on 4chan. And you must give props to Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton for being honest with their photos. I am well aware there are fake ones, and I'm not accussing Victoria Justice of lying. But I'm not drawing to a conclusion of truth.

But there is one thing you should take in mind with your private photos, nude or not, is look up how to protect them. I personally don't know much other than be wary. Apparently there is a "My Photo Stream" feature that you can easily forget to disable. There are also extra steps to delete photos for good if you can truely can that some of these women didn't take. And of course strong passwords. I can predict something like "jen1990," but I can't predict "ragstitch01." When the youngest of these women were in middle school internet wasn't mandatory at home, MySpace didn't even exist, and they had simple flip-phones. So they aren't really in on the risks in drastic detail like us. 

My deepest sympathies for all the victims of this scandal and anyone who has been hacked or had someone share a personal photo of them without consent.