It’s no secret that it was a rough couple of months for Jennifer Lawrence and countless other celebs whose selfies were leaked after their cloud accounts were compromised. Since we’re based in LA, we’re familiar with the pressures of life in the spotlight, so we decided to help celebs like Ms. Lawrence by sharing the secret to protecting their digital privacy.
Let’s Look at How Selfie Leaks Happen
When you take selfies on your iPhone or Android, they may be automatically uploaded to whichever cloud service you signed up with. Most of these cloud services do encrypt your data when it is saved in the cloud. But the question is, how strong is the encryption?
The encryption key to your data is often decided by the service itself, meaning the service provider has the master-key in their servers. That leaves your selfies vulnerable to prying eyes who can find various means of accessing your account, which is how so many celebrities had their private selfies leaked to the public.
Does the Two-step Authentication Offered by Some Services Prevent Hacks?
The answer is often ‘no’. While helpful, two-step authentication is not a foolproof method. Employees of your cloud service, who may have access to the service’s system, can simply bypass the two-step method and snatch your selfies.
So would a strong password prevent people from cracking your data?
A strong password is another step in having solid data security because it makes it difficult to guess the right key. But it is by no means a guarantee that hackers can’t sidestep your password through ‘forgot password’ email interceptions, or that an employee won’t have direct access to that information. You simply need more than a strong password.
So What Is the Solution to Saving Jennifer’s Selfies?
The answer is Private Key Encryption.
Private key is simply the most secure way to protect your data. Period. So secure in fact, that had Jennifer Lawrence been using a cloud storage solution with a private key, her selfies never would have hit the limelight.
Our optional private key would have made it impossible for others to access Jennifer’s data. She could have chosen the encryption key that unlocks her data. The key would have never been stored in our systems and only Jennifer could have accessed her private photos.
Now Let’s Summarize How IDrive Can Protect Your Selfies
First we use 256-bit AES encryption where we apply our ‘Private Key’ encryption, an optional keyphrase used to encrypt your data. The key is chosen by the user–Jennifer Lawrence, for instance–so we never know what it is. That means no one but Jennifer can ever access her data. That’s real privacy. That’s what Jennifer deserves. That’s what everyone deserves.
So Here’s How Celebs Can Use IDrive to Protect Their Selfies:
- No matter what kind of selfies you’re taking — we don’t judge! — back them up securely with IDrive. Keep your privacy in your hands, not those who will mishandle it.
- Choose a private key, so no one but you can access your data. That way you can still protect those memories without fear of them falling into the wrong hands.
The hard lesson learned from the celebrity selfie leaks is that data is more than just data, it’s our digital life. Now celebs have an opportunity to protect their privacy the right way with IDrive.
To help the effort, we’re launching a special page dedicated to helping spread the word of secure selfies, called saveourselfies.com. We’re also offering a special deal to any celebrity affected by the leaks, or any well-known personalities who want to protect their data: They’ll get free, unlimited mobile backup for life, along with instructions on how to ensure their private data stays private. Acceptance will be on a case-by-case basis. If you’d like to learn more, e-mail us at info@saveourselfies.com.
(Image courtesy Wikipedia, edited for size.)
