The Fappening, victim blaming, and personal responsibility.

I think the whole debate about who is to blame is focusing on the wrong issue. The correct question is: why should we care?

Reply 41

Truths

15

Original post by tazarooni89

It's even easier to find out other people's e-mail addresses than their passwords. For someone who is able to discover a password, an email address is not much of a problem.

It maybe easier to guess an email to someone you are close to and know in person. But I doubt it was as simple as guessing, only going by is a name & Wikipedia page. And then after that you have hundreds of similar fan bases addresses that you have to hack and verify. Extremely unlikely it was simply guessing game. It's more likely, that they obtained the emails from a lower security 3rd party subscription.

Original post by tazarooni89

I don't think there is a double standard in attitudes. I'm sure we'd happily say that it is sensible to avoid sharing sensitive information via text, voicemail, or any other stored/recorded medium if you can avoid it. And if you must share it this way, it is sensible to be aware of the risk that the wrong person might find them, and to use methods which are secure, proportional to how sensitive that information is.
Taking into account that phones have become natural mode of human communication, it's kinda unfair to expect or suggest a celebrity to not take advantage of this as anyone else would. People share sensitive information to the extent of even incriminating information over the phone all the time, because it's deemed as natural as it would be face to face. And for the people who don't have the luxury of face to face, phones are all they have. Especially celebrities in relationships who travel daily in their careers. Sexting is all they have, which was the case for many of these celebs who were hacked. I find it unfair to expect them to sacrifice this ability along with everything else they have. Just because they have money, doesn't make them any less human and I understand that they are over idolised and scrutinised, but there is a line. It's been crossed.

Reply 42

Gwilym101

17

Original post by Dandaman1

x

You raise some valid points about being cautious with personal stuff but some of the people who had photos leaked were careful. The main one I'm aware of was Mary Elizabeth Winstead who took the photos for her husband then deleted all of them. Some one managed to recover them, it's hardly her fault when she did take precautions.

Reply 43

blue n white army

16

Original post by Narcissist

Rubbish, same kind of attitude that has people say girls who wear revealing clothes have themselves to blame if they are the victim of sexual assault.

People should not have to curtail their decisions based on the scum in the world with no moral integrity.

Correct, in a perfect world there would be no bad people and we'd all be free to do whatever we want with out repercussion.

Sadly there are lots of bad people who lack even the slightest bit of moral code, so to suggest that people take steps to avoid these people isn't ludicrous or disgusting, i'd say it's quite sensible.

Reply 44

Namige

17

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

That doesn't even apply...

A better analogy to electronic hacking would be.

'Despite having locked all my doors and made sure all my windows were shut, some professional thieves pulled up in a van, used special equipment to pull my living room window out, then raided my home'

It;s the victims fault for not hiring some guards to patrol his/her home whilst out.

This was a password based brute force attack. In other words, it's like using a really rubbish lock on your door, or a rubbish window.

Reply 45

tazarooni89

20

Original post by Truths

Taking into account that phones have become natural mode of human communication, it's kinda unfair to expect or suggest a celebrity to not take advantage of this as anyone else would. People share sensitive information to the extent of even incriminating information over the phone all the time, because it's deemed as natural as it would be face to face. And for the people who don't have the luxury of face to face, phones are all they have. Especially celebrities in relationships who travel daily in their careers. Sexting is all they have, which was the case for many of these celebs who were hacked. I find it unfair to expect them to sacrifice this ability along with everything else they have. Just because they have money, doesn't make them any less human and I understand that they are over idolised and scrutinised, but there is a line. It's been crossed.

I'm aware that people share sensitive information over the phone all the time, but that doesn't mean it's a smart thing to do. It's nothing to do with how much money they've got; as a celebrity, it's sensible for them to expect more attacks of this sort than an average person would, because everybody knows them.

Reply 46

Tabris

16

Original post by Gwilym101

You raise some valid points about being cautious with personal stuff but some of the people who had photos leaked were careful. The main one I'm aware of was Mary Elizabeth Winstead who took the photos for her husband then deleted all of them. Some one managed to recover them, it's hardly her fault when she did take precautions.

It could be a multitude of reasons, none of which you or I will ever know the full extent of unless the hacker/cracker who obtained these photos, or Apple give us every minute detail.

It could be Apple retaining data permanently and merely restricting user access instead of actually deleting it. It could be that she'd never actually deleted said data, despite claims otherwise. It could be that her husband was the one who didn't delete the photos and his account was the one that was compromised. It could be that neither of them used secure enough passwords and the data was still there. It's easy to say that you did everything you could and to her knowledge she may well have, but there's still a chance that her husband did not. There are a lot of possibilities as to what could have happened. All you or I really need to know is that someone, somewhere, has done a boo-boo.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 47

Per

12

I think the real problem exposed in the whole incident is the insecurity of storing information on the iCloud. It's a shame it happened but I don't blame the celebrities for using the service, many people don't even know about their mobile information being backed up automatically and I think it was quite surprising for everyone when it was hacked.

Reply 48

Snagprophet

17

I just love the name, The Fappening. It just makes me think of Mark Walburg talking completely bland while hundreds pictures of nude celebrities fly out of my computer as the whole world is turned into alien slaves which faps themselves.

Reply 49

Ggmu!

It was wrong for them to be hacked as much as it would be if it were done to you, OP.

Obviously, being realistic, the celebrities are in a different position to you and could have been more careful. They have done things I consider a breach of common sense so I don't have all that much sympathy for them.

But the law is the law, and it should take effect immediately.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 50

vickidc18

15

Yeah while I agree it's very silly for anyone to take nude pictures of themselves, I have to say though if a male a-lister such as Brad Pitt had a completely nude photo of himself leaked on the net it would be a much smaller scandal, victim blaming always happens to women.......

Reply 51

tillytots

19

It's an invasion of privacy. It is never acceptable to hack someones private property no matter what status. It's theft end of.

Reply 52

james22

16

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

That doesn't even apply...

A better analogy to electronic hacking would be.

'Despite having locked all my doors and made sure all my windows were shut, some professional thieves pulled up in a van, used special equipment to pull my living room window out, then raided my home'

It;s the victims fault for not hiring some guards to patrol his/her home whilst out.

IIRC those that had their photos leaked had terrible online security (passwords just being a single word for example).

Reply 53

james22

16

Original post by Truths

I never once used the word, "blaming" in that post or the part you chose to bold. I only used the language of the actual OP TITLE, which is "personal responsibility". So the question still stands, why was no one talking about "personal responsibility" when private phone calls were recorded and exploited in the name journalism, but when private sexual pictures and videos are recorded and leaked for entertainment there is such a thing as" personal responsibility"? I'm listening?

Simple. In the case of phone calls being recorded there was some proper hacking going on, something significantly harder to avoid.

These celebrities didn't really get hacked in the usual sense, someone just used a program to guess a load of passwords. If they had used good passwords (very basic online security) then they would be safe.

Reply 54

james22

16

Original post by Narcissist

Rubbish, same kind of attitude that has people say girls who wear revealing clothes have themselves to blame if they are the victim of sexual assault.

People should not have to curtail their decisions based on the scum in the world with no moral integrity.