Celebrity hacking scandal: Is privacy doomed for us all?
Thanks to the internet, smartphones and social media, every shameful moment in time is captured and spread like wildfire before we’ve even had the chance to sign offline.
Earlier this week more than 100 celebrities — including stars Jennifer Lawrence, Michelle Keegan and Selena Gomez — are said to have had nude snaps hacked from their web accounts.
It was a gross violation of privacy, one I felt was publicised in a way that seemed to invite mockery and laughter, rather than sympathy.
The media has been awash with the news that there seems to be a pile of naked celebrity photographs lurking around the internet.
People’s private moments, violated in an illegal manner, all for the sake of the hacker and every curious voyeur’s pleasure.
Today we live in a society where privacy seems profoundly silly, preposterous, almost. Well, you shouldn’t have taken the picture in the first place, we are told. Unless, of course, you half expect it to be bestowed around the internet.
We are led to believe that privacy is something now of ancient history. If something emerges online that the victim didn’t want anyone to see then it is their fault, of course, and they shouldn’t have something so incriminating in the first place.
When something like the nude hacking scandal happens, it’s hard not to be left fearing over how safe all of our other personal information is, such as bank details and private passwords.
The celebrity scandal is just one example of how unsafe our phone and internet documents really are in the digitial age.
If anything positive was to come out of this, it is that it has at least opened up our eyes to what is truly secure when it comes to putting our details online.
When news of the scandal broke, Apple rushed to restore consumer by confidence saying the attacks were targeted to specific accounts and were not a direct breach of Apple systems.
However this did little to calm social networks, which exploded with worries about us mere mortals being affected too.
Aside from making an esteemed effort to be a lot more careful with our personal files, we must all take more measures to stop victim-blaming those affected by this in future.
There are all too many scorned men and women out there who post indecent images online in an attempt to embarrass their ex-partners.
This is an act of sexual violation and is punishable — surely this scandal should be treated the same?
No matter how famous a person is, privacy is still a basic human need and is necessary for anybody’s mental health.
So, next time you decide to share an embarrassing video of a stranger or humiliating photograph online, stop to think about what implications this could have on the person involved.
