By Jenna Barbone
A recent scandal, or what most people are calling a crime, has made many question the security of Apple iCloud. On September 1, celebrities Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Victoria Justice, and many more were exposed by an iCloud hacker. The hacker broke into these celebrities’ iCloud accounts which store private pictures. Revealing photos of these celebrities, which were not intended for the public to see, were stolen and posted online by a blogger named 4chan.
Grande and Justice however, claimed these photos were fake and edited, but other victims of this breach, such as Lawrence, confirmed that these pictures were in fact, real but meant to stay private. Lawrences’ pictures were taken down because according to theverge.com, a spokesperson for Lawrence stated that anyone who posts these stolen photos will be prosecuted by the proper authorities.
The stars are horrified and feel invaded not just by the hacker but by Apple. Model Joy Corrigan, who was also a target, contacted Apple and complained that she was a victim of phishing. Apple responded by saying they are not responsible and that all she can do is to change her password. Even though Apple denies any responsibility for these photos being leaked, many blame Apple for allowing an infinite number of guesses on iCloud passwords. Celebrities, especially, need to change their security question answers since it’s easy for the public to research the answers to questions like “What was your first dog’s name” or “What is your mom’s maiden name.”
Due to this breach, many people are turning off the iCloud option on their iPhones and questioning if iCloud is even necessary. The service is meant to be backup for pictures, music, emails, texts and to share content between devices. To many people this is a great way of saving purchased music and apps but has just been a liability for storing private pictures. When a picture is deleted, most people don’t expect it to be stored and saved somewhere – they want it to be deleted for good. American actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who was also a victim, tweeted, “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,” and another tweet, “Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this.”
Hopefully Apple has learned their lesson in creating the iCloud. If people are shutting off this service to save themselves from embarrassment, it should no longer exist.