Many celebrities got an unpleasant shock this past weekend. You may have heard that up to 100 celebrities – film stars, etc. – had nude photos hacked and leaked on renegade Web site 4chan.org. Many of the photos were apparently genuine.

Now that the FBI is investigating how these photos were hacked and posted, it’s an unfortunate reminder of the difficulties of maintaining our privacy in this digital age.

I won’t name the celebrities involved, but it’s safe to say it’s a huge invasion of privacy. Some experts are theorizing that the hacker or hackers exploited weaknesses in Apple’s iCloud platform. Apple is now investigating, according to reports and released this statement. Here’s an excerpt: “After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet. None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find my iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.”

As a major player in the data security business, we think that this is just a reminder to everyone that when data goes digital, there are security risks involved. It’s a hard lesson.

As British actress Emma Watson (who was not targeted in the hacking) wrote on Twitter: “Even worse than seeing women’s privacy violated on social media is reading the accompanying comments that show such a lack of empathy.â€

Protecting yourself

How to protect yourself, even when you’re not a celebrity? Here are some tips, which we’ve stressed before but can’t stress enough:

• Create difficult passwords. Besides the speculation that iCloud was the victim, it has been suggested the hacker or hackers exploited each of the 100+ accounts’ passwords. As I’ve mentioned before, don’t use your birthday, and create multiple passwords for multiple accounts!
• Consider switching off automatic Cloud photo sharing and backups/Photo Stream. This is a convenience tradeoff. To turn off automatic iCloud sharing, go into your Settings, then iCloud, then scroll down to photos and slide the option to Off.
• Use encryption. Here I will proudly put in a plug for our own mobile phone encryption software, which protects your data against intrusion by encrypting your documents. This is a must for anyone storing private personal or important business intelligence on their phones.
• Think about using a USB drive. If you want to share personal information or photos with a specific person, just use a USB.

As celebrities, Apple, and the FBI come to grips with this specific hacking instance, it’s important to realize everyone’s information is at stake these days – celebrity or not –

And an excellent reminder that we need to actively protect ours.

Image courtesy of ITV.com