Violet Blue in Wake up: The celebrity nudes hack is everyone’s problem follows offering ten steps for victims to protect themselves with:
Telling victims that they “shouldn’t have done it” or “what did you expect” is pointless. Instead of blaming and shaming, how about some information people can really use to help them make the decisions that are right for them, and equipping them with tools to mitigate, minimize and even possibly avoid damage if something goes wrong?
Which is deeply ironic because both Violet Blue and a number of the comments blame/shame Apple for the security breach.
Blaming and shaming IT companies for security breaches is about as non-productive as any blaming and shaming can be.
As you probably know already, security breaches are not viewed as promotional opportunities, at least by the companies suffering the security breach.
Missing from most discussions of the hacked iCloud accounts are questions like:
- How to improve ICloud security?
- What improved security will cost?
- Who will pay the cost (including inconvenience) of improved iCloud security?
- …(and other issues)
Violet’s ten steps to help people protect themselves are OK, but if highly trained and security conscious administrators share passwords with Edward Snowden, a violation of basic password security, lots of luck on getting anyone to follow Violet’s ten rules.
Blaming and shaming IT companies for security breaches may play well to crowds, but it doesn’t get us any closer to solving security issues either from a technical (coding/system/authentication) or social (cost/inconvenience allocation) perspective.
PS: Perhaps Apple should have a warning on uploads to the ICloud:
Digital data, such as IPhone photos are at risk of being stolen and mis-used by others. Uploading/sharing/emailing digital data increases that risk exponentially. YHBW