Celebrity phone hacks (celebrity phones hacked and content leaked)
Hackers try what others think impossible, risky, and pointless. They love to peep into the intimate world of celebrities. This makes Celebrity phone hacks popular.
Several female celebrities became a victim of Celebrity phone hacks in the past. The hackers made their private pictures plastered all over the internet. And, as soon as this happened, gossips started spreading at an alarming speed on the internet. The general opinion about this was a scandal and a disgraceful affair. But hacking phones of a person and distributing the private contents therein is a crime and considered as a form of sexual harassment. So, it can never be a subject of juicy gossip.
The women celebrities who fall prey to these Celebrity phone hacks do not share their photos consensually on the internet. So, the leaks cannot be considered as part of scandals. No matter what the public thinks about taking and sharing private photos on the internet, it is certainly not the fault of the women whose privacy has been violated.
Unfortunately, modern American society expects that people, especially women, are responsible for protecting themselves from such abuses. While the celebrities who upload their private and sensitive images on the internet are making them vulnerable to hacking, they can never be blamed for what has happened to them.
Like any other citizen, celebrities also have the right to lead their personal life as they choose. The hackers publicized intimate pictures of the celebrities and shamefully twisted those to be a matter of public gossip.
No one can intrude on the private life of any woman because she is attractive. One must remember that their bodies are not the property of the public. As such, anyone who views or shares such photos becomes complicit in the crime against these women.
How do Celebrity phone hacks happen?
Celebrities are like us and are also prone to suffer mobile threats like phishing and malware. Time is very precious for them and most of them do not like to have different passcodes for different accounts for the extra seconds needed. A majority of them do not use a password at all.
See them in a tabloid; they are holding a coffee cup in one hand and a mobile in the other. Most probably they use public WI-Fi at the coffee parlors. They also have many friends and click on links from friends without scrutiny falling prey to phishing.
Because of their hard pressing commitments, they hardly find any time to upgrade their mobiles. Thus, they are forced to use software with vulnerabilities. All these made their devices hacked.
Top 5 Celebrity phone hacks
Of late, news of cybercriminals invading personal data of celebrities has come to the frontline. These are valuable and hacks do this for financial gain and notoriety. The followings are the top 5 incidences of Celebrity phone hacks
- Repeated posting of sensitive and private pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Anna Kendrick, and others
These photos have been accessed illegally and posted on the internet over and over. It seems hackers have stolen those private photos from iCloud accounts of the celebrities by compromising the passwords. Such abuses are continuously taking place making more and more women victims. Consequently, Apple has introduced a two-factor (2FA) authentication. The image-based bulletin board 4Chan has made its content policies tightened. Maybe the culprits will be brought to books.
- Leakage of unreleased songs of Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and many other pop stars
These celebrities had their devices infected with malware for stealing unreleased songs, credit card information, photos, emails, etc in 2010. This was done by two young German lads who did these for earning money as an unreleased song can fetch 5-figure sums. But the authorities think that blackmailing was also their motive. Both of them received punishment.
- Bank details and other personal information of Beyonce, Michelle Obama, and others were hacked
A group of hackers published their personal information, credit card details, social security numbers, bank details, mortgages, addresses, etc on a new website in 2013. The leak was revealed through annualcreditreport.com that must have been compromised by unknown means. It is also not clear if this was a case of straightforward hacking or the hackers obtained enough information, of their targets, from the web and used those for impersonation. While gaining financially is the most obvious motive, bragging rights were also behind these.
- Stealing of Miley Cyrus photos from the email account and publishing them
This is quite interesting for several reasons. When her photos were stolen in 2008, Miley Cyrus was 15 years of age. And like many other teens, she naively used the same password on Gmail and MySpace. The hacker impersonated a MySpace worker on instant messenger and gained access to the MySpace account of Miley Cyprus. The hacker tried the password on Gmail, downloaded photos, and published those. However, no nudity was involved. The photos only show her bare midriff under the shower in cute underwear. But, that did not stop the gossipmonger websites. They also posted the photos happily. The hacker was sentenced to 3 years probation.
- Publication of nude photos and lurid texts of Scarlett Johannson, Mila Kunis, and others.
Around 50 persons connected to the entertainment industry suffered from a gross violation of privacy when a hacker gained access to their emails and stole nude photos and lurid texts. And, the gossip-mongering websites happily published those. It was known as ‘Operation Hackerazzi’. The hacker, Christopher Chaney reportedly changes the email settings of the celebrities for automatic forwarding of messages to another email that he has access to. The hacker got a 10 years jail.
Conclusion
Hackers win because of our stupidity. They can access phones in millions of ways and have more under their sleeves. The celebrities must, therefore, be careful about storing sensitive information on their phones and about sending things, electronically, that they would not like to share with the world. This and using a strong password can only prevent Celebrity phone hacks.
