The Celebrity Hacking Trend – Plain Cyberbulling or Clever Publicity Stunts?

Celebrities do suffer from their fame. There are no shortage of stories about celebrities accounts being hacked online or their phones being stolen and hacked. They need to deal with sex tape leaks, nude photo leaks, other indecent photo leaks, damaging recordings etc.

A celebrity sex tape is typically an amateur pornographic video recording involving one or more celebrities which has, intentionally or unintentionally, been made available publicly. Such video tapes are often released without the consent of their subjects, and could potentially damage celebrities’ careers. In 1988, a sex tape caused significant damage to Rob Lowe‘s career.

Kim Kardashian West was victim to a sex tape leak in 2007 when her former boyfriend Ray J sold it and shared it online. However later that year was when Keeping Up With The Kardashians debuted on our screens. The reality TV star was as glorified socialite before the release of her tape and it made her family show on E as popular as it was.  

Paris Hilton suffered a leak around the same time as the Simple Life debuted. Socialite Paris Hilton has had to develop a thick skin over the years. You might recall that the 1st sex tape leaked of her was when she was a teen. She filmed a sex tape with her then-boyfriend, Rick Salomon, which went viral back in 2004. She later sued him for leaking it and has always denied rumors that she’d consented to the leak in order to gain publicity for her reality TV show. “people want to be mean, that’s their problem. It used to be really hurtful. I would call and cry to my mom all the time but now I just laugh.” – Paris Hilton.

Now don’t confuse me. I’m not saying that these celebrities have actually planned their hack. I actually genuinly feel sorry for these celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence. On August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, and with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur, Reddit and Tumblr. The images were believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple’s cloud services suite iCloud. Apple later confirmed that the hackers responsible for the leak had obtained the images using a “very targeted attack” on account information, such as passwords, rather than any specific security vulnerability in the iCloud service itself.

This event, trended on twitter using  #Celebgate” and #TheFappening“. A lot of people criticized the authenticity of the images, others felt that the distribution was a major privacy invasion. Worldwide however, the main concern was how safe iCloud computing actually was. Sara Angeles, staff writer from the Business news daily outlines 8 reasons why businesses should be petrified about using the cloud. As if Jason Segel & Cameron Diaz hadn’t scared us enough!!!

Cyberattacks should be people’s main problem with the cloud. Anyone anywhere can hack anything that is stored anywhere on the internet. Angeles also points out legal liability and government intrusion along with 5 other very crucial pit falls of the cloud. The Cloud does have its vulnerabilities, so how about phone hacking??

Phone hacking to me feels more invasive. With how too guides sprawled around the internet, everybody can act like John Reese, from Person of Interest.. hmmmmm.

In the show, they target and bug people by being in a close enough vicinity and engaging in using a hacking programme. Once successfully hacked they can listen to voice mails, read messages, listen to phone conversations and edit and recieve your texts.

I have looked at celeb photo hacking, and leaking. iCould sharing and oversharing. Video tapes and viral video leaks and phone hacking. These are only but a few means that people use to divuldge more information/money/pain/suffering out of their subjects of interest.

#Selfie

The Selfie cyber culture today are concerned with their online presence, appearance, reactions from followers and their results. When you post a photo of yourself on the internet to be looked at by your peers or people you may not know, when you get a like your ‘up’ but when you get no likes your ‘down’. There is also the danger that your self-esteem may start to be related and tied to how many likes or comments you receive once you post a selfie. Lauren McMahon, writes about our selfie obsessed generation on TheCircular.

I have taken selfies, but really not to extent that some people do. We all have our Facebook, twitter, Instagram or Snapchat friends that really love sharing their ‘staged’ mug. What prompted me to write this blog was a recent grocery shop I was on. While shopping in Lidl I saw a girl by the fruit section taking a selfie of herself and a banana. She obviously wasn’t happy with the first result because she went on to take a few others from different angles. Then, there was issues with the filters she was using so, she rang someone who helped her through the dilemma. It was a tough call, but they decided that ether ‘Perpetua’ or ‘Hudson’ would be just fine. These are filters on Instagram for those of you who don’t know that can distort the colours of the picture you take. I waisted about 6-7 mins of my life watching her, but she saw it as she devoted 6-7 mins to maintain her online image and presence.

Selfie accessories…

selfie buttons

standered selfie stick

iPhone camera trigger

zuckerberg selfie stick

selfie brush

timer capture

We are even accommodating the selfie culture by creating selfie accessories. Now I would have thought that you need 1- yourself and 2 –  a camera, but NO. The selfie enthusiast will come complete with a bank of accessories. Such as, The Selfie stick which to be honest I can see the benefits of it. Like, if you were taking a group picture and you want to be in it, its amazing. Whip out the stick, pop your phone on, time the shot, DONE. Everyone’s happy. This stops you from asking a stranger around you to take the picture, and you don’t have to worry about your phone/camera being broken by another, who’s only trying to help or being stolen by that person! (because it has happened!!) You also don’t need to use a tripod, you don’t shake your hand as much with a selfie stick and there is much less of a chance of dropping your phone with the selfie sticks. Phonearena.com surprised me. The only selfie accessory to date that  I was aware of was the selfie stick, but there’s more. They have composed a list of the 5 most useful selfie taking accessories for the selfie-obsessives. Read about them, quite interesting really. One does not simply just take a selfie.

I personally thought that the HISY button was clever as I use a similar device for photo shoots as a photographer. It’s almost like the amature’s progression button towards professional techniques. HISY aims to help you take a selfie with an iPhone more easily. It’s a simple button that connects to the phone via low-energy Bluetooth, and takes control of the built-in shutter camera. HISY’s battery lasts for two years if you take 100 photos daily, which means the little’o button will last for a while. And when it expires, you can replace it with a plain CR2032 cell straight out of your local electronics shop. Of course, the gizmo can be used not just for selfies, but for all kinds of photographs too, even video. HISY doesn’t need a special app to run, it connects directly to the iPhone’s camera app, and can only be used with iPhones ISO7 or newer. Unlucky for the Android selfieists.

As much benefits as there are for using the selfie stick, there are a few cons too….

Museums, concerts, stores and some clubs are now banning the use of these sticks as there seen as a hazard and disturbance. In early March, two American tourists were arrested after they carved their names into a wall at Rome’s Colosseum and then the pair took a photo using a selfie stick. (true story). Rebecca Strong, Staff writer for Bostinno, has written an interesting article about our selfie obsessions and writes about it as an addiction. Can you actually develop a selfie addiction. When I thought about this, the answer I came up with was, Yes. Like any other addiction, it would come down to your personality and how influenced you can be as a person by trends, fads, peer pressure and whats fashionable.

In 2014 Ellen DeGeneres broke the Internet & beat Obama with most retweeted tweet with the Oscars Selfie with a Samsung on stage, but later switched to an iPhone backstage, which makes me ask the question, what is the selfie enthusiastic’s phone of choice for #Selfie. Bostinno have actually gone the extra mile and have listed features of the most popular selfie phones and also have taken the same picture with each phone to show you the difference in quality.

Few Facts Of the Origins of the word Selfie:

In November 2013, the word “selfie” was announced as being the “word of the year” by the Oxford English Dictionary, which gave the word itself an Australian origin. A “selfie” is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: ”a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smart phone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” The example they use is super-helpful because it also contains some etiquette advice: “Occasional selfies are acceptable, but posting a new picture of yourself every day isn’t necessary.” (hint, hint). Also The word Selfie, was coined by a drunk Australian in 2002. On January 28th 2014 The Chainsmoker’s released a song called #Selfie. It took the world by storm and verified the selfie culture as we know it. Bustle is a good website with great articles and facts on selfie origins.

Some people take the selfie obsession to far (Girl with the Banana in Lidl) or even the Cellfy Stic (which is now mainly used for bathroom selfies)… WHY??? -> others are just jumping along on the trend band waggon as am I. Selfies are fun, rather than living in the moment and remembering it from memories, you can take the memories while living in the moment.

So Until the next blog post,

Online Identity

Your Online profile Digital Identity is a term used to describe the persona of an individual which presents across all the online communities that you’re a member of. When we use sites or services like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Ebay, Google or LinkedIn, we leave a ‘digital footprint‘. Every photo you share, posts you make, items you search/buy, tweets you twurp or email sent, you leave a footprint. The footprints you make are used to generate your online persona and silently build an online profile of you. There are many websites that are starting to do this with striking degrees of accuracy. This information that is collected can be used to target you for marketing purposes, data collection, profile building, profile scanning, DNA data collecting, analysis & observation. I, like most of you would have assumed, the trails we leave are just for marketing. However, now that I am really thinking about what could very likely will be its other uses, its easy to see how our online information can be miss used. The black-market of the future will sell real lives or invented identity for a costly fee. People in the future wanting to start over and become someone else will have the ability to do so. I believe that society as we see it now, will in 30-40 years time, be drastically different. Picture a futuristic world where entry to buildings is based on an intelligence system that analyses your human presence & matches it ti its online data on you in a matter of seconds. The online data footprints we leave are all tracked, monitored & recorded. From now I recommend you to be careful what you share. Sites like specify, intel, pipl or even a quick google search will show what information about you is accessible to the public.

Every movement we make online its tracked so the image above as an imaginative visual of you.  Executive Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt said: Online Developments in Anonymity. However anonymous you think you are online, even by creating a pseudonym, you can be ID’d. Andrew Lewman, The executive director of the Tor Project plans to re-anonymise the web. The Tor software confuses a users web traffic by bouncing the signal to different locations, so anyone that is watching is unable to trace who you are or where you are. Lewman spoke about how important our identity online is: “The ability to be anonymous is increasingly important because it gives people control, it lets them be creative, it lets them figure out their identity and explore what they want to do, or to research topics that aren’t necessarily ‘them’ and may not want tied to their real name for perpetuity,” Aleks Krotoski, has been writing about interactivity since 1999. She has a PhD in the social psychology of relationships in online communities. She also writes articles feature pieces and opinion pieces. While browsing, I came across an article she wrote on Online Identity: Is authenticity or anonymity more important?? The article is well worth a read as she questions and quotes high authority figures in the interactive world. How To Be ‘Identity Savvy’ online & to watch what footprints you leave Statistics from CNN show that Identity Fraud is on the rise and growing since 2010 where the figure rose from 10.2 million to 13.1 million in 2013. I have formed a few useful steps in how you can protect your identity online & use online applications wisely. We don’t need to live like hermits in tinfoil, but having a degree of awareness helps.

• Use strong passwords and do not share them with anyone. A random combination of numbers, letters and punctuation over eight characters long is recommended. Do not repeat a password that is used for other accounts. If one password is leaked, at least your other passwords are different.
• Check your billing and account records carefully to detect potential identity theft early. Online banking updates almost immediately. When logging in to your online banking system, ensure that you have complete privacy.
• If your signing up to newsgroups, offers, mailing lists, use your less frequently used email address. Be careful when signing up to mailing lists – spammers use the unsubscribe button to validate addresses.
• Only share your primary email address with people you know.
• Only make online purchases from companies that have a clear privacy policy and secure payment pages. There usually obvious to spot, Paypal for instance, have a specific size, and locations on websites they appear. Using Paypal is usually a safer alternative to using your bank card details online.
• Think before you fill out online forms. Ask yourself, how much information do I need to enter into this site?
• Keep a record of what information you have given to whom.
• Be careful how much personal information you post or reveal online.
• Users who share addresses, telephone numbers, birthdays, and other personal information put themselves at a greater risk of identity theft, stalking and harassment. This includes information you post on social media.

• If you use social networking sites, adjust your privacy settings to control the amount and type of information you want to share, so that people you don’t know very well can only see certain parts of your profile.
• We all have fun on social media, checking in, taking pictures of what we are doing and sharing them, but be careful how often you do this. Out and about statuses let people know your not at home. Take this lollipop!
• Think about what information you may have online that is spread across multiple sites. Identity thieves can piece together your identity from public information piece by piece like putting together a puzzle. The footprints we leave can not be washed away.

Mario Rodriguez who is a faculty member of Communications and Media Studies Department at Stetson University gave a TED talk the 12th of April 2013 on Facebook Privacy & Identity – Exploring your digital self. He studied Facebook privacy for his dissertation and compiled alot of primary research you might find interesting. His particular emphasis on privacy is not only relevant to the job market but shows that online privacy is an essential topic for cultivating 21st century media literacy. He also discusses Social media privacy and questions our representation online.

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

What is this all about?

Digital natives are the people who were born into a generation of technology and were born roughly from the mid 1990’s on. This generation is also referred to as the ‘Net Generation’. People born before this time would be known as Digital Immigrants.

Since time has begun, we have labeled each generation.

• The people who fought in WW1 are known as The Lost Generation.
  

• People born from 1916 – 1920 are known as The Greatest or The GI Generation as this generation fought in WW2 & the survivors that live to this day are honored veterans.

• The Silent Generation label was given to those born from 1926-1938 & they are known as the children of the great depression.

• The next generation from 1945-1960 was named The Baby Boom Generation.

• We called the next generation, Generation X which was people born from 1960 – 1982. This was a really nasty generation as families experienced lots of divorces and suicide and murder figures skyrocketed. However, this was the first generation to experience personal computing, gender equality and started more businesses.

• Generation Y came next which was people born from 1982-the mid 1990’s. My generation actually. We were the fortunate ones to be born during the big economic boom which was emerging through large developments in technology. They started ‘planning’ families with having deliberate children. Health care and education improved a bit, not by much depending on which country you were in. The USA & Europe would have had a similar change and advancement and some countries developed quicker.

• Digital Natives are the generation from the mid 1990’s and on to this day in 2015. They are the tech savvy’ist of us all. My kid cousin was born in 2008 and he is able to beat me by 204 levels in Candy Crush on his iPad & also fix the reason by iMessages aren’t sending? The Kid is 7 years of age and I just think he is wonderful. FYI he has been fixing my IT issues since he was 4 years old.

Digital immigrants include all those generations before generation Y and even some people in generation Y. Can the digital natives teach us? Will they take over from us? To be honest, to think about what way technology will be in 10 years time is interesting isn’t it? But is also a little scary. Just think, if my four year old cousin in 2012, fixed my iCloud back up & sorted the settings on my iPhone, with a limited verbal capacity & knowledge of the world, what will he be doing 10 years from then? Breaking firewalls, hacking Washington DC, controlling his own android robotic army?!?! these thoughts just cross my mind sometimes. Its really going to be based on his education that he gets now though isn’t it? The great Sir Ken Robinson gave a great TED talk into how schools kill creativity. Its really worth a watch.

The below video will bring you to youtube:

The link below will bring you to the TED website:

My only hope is that little Cian isn’t told to change and become a normal high achieving creature of the education system here in Ireland, that ends up with high points and does law, medicine or teaching. I hope he will be encouraged and led to a path of success by his teachers through life. Maybe a lot has changed now though. It might not be as unbalanced as what it was when I went through primary or secondary, where if you were good at art, and you exceeded all expectations in it, your maths grade decided if you made it to college or not. I hope that they will re address the system so he has a fighting chance of becoming the next Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Bill gates, Marissa Ann Mayer, Joseph M. Tucci or even the next Mark Zuckerberg.

The digital native himself the other day, skyped me to inform me that he has to scroll down through his game for a while in candy crush before he finds me….. on the level ladder & added that his mom is still getting texts from me from my iCloud email.

I don’t understand it at all, and this smug 7 year old is just itching to fix it. He fixed an issue I was having with internet connectivity on his last visit when he was 6 on the cusp of turning 7. The type of age that a person in born into, moulds the person for the future. With the right guidance, education & support, they can be who ever they wish to be. Although it is intimidating, knowing that the digital native is gaining more knowledge and is going to lead the way to future advancements is exciting.

Jeff De Graff, author for the Huffington post wrote a great article on his point of view between the digital native and the digital immigrant. Lastly see this great quote by Rupert Murdoch as he talks about himself as a digital immigrant. 

Cybercultures, An Introduction.

The need to know…

Cybercultures is becoming a very talk about topic today. Cybercultures is a culture about the new or emerging developments from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business.

It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the internet and other new forms of the network communication, such as online communities. I used an online community before called imvu, it was enjoyable as it reminded me of the sims which has now become an online community too with the launch of sims 3.

Barry O Halloran, a writer on the website Whatculture, gives a run down of his top 7 online gaming communities. I was a bit surprised that World Of War Craft or Second Life did not appear in the list, but in comparison to the new online communities developed now, that O Halloran has listed, I can see there is much more choice and each community is more tailored to every persons personality, likes and dislikes.

I wouldn’t consider myself to be a big online gamer and I couldn’t say I have much experience in this area, but what I found next on the website upset me a bit!! He also has compiled a list of the 7 Worst online gaming communities and I will admit, that I chuckeled at a few, but was surprised that Call of Duty, Black Ops was the raining champion of the Worst!!

Cybercultures is also the study of other types of various network communications, wearable computing, social gaming, social media, mobile apps, augmented reality, and texting, and includes issues related to identity, privacy, and network formation.

This link to a TED TALK by Kevin Kelly, gives an interesting insight into the world of cybercultures. Its called The Next 5000 days of The Web.