It’s Tuesday. Do you know where YOUR pictures are?
If you’ve read or listened to anything that comes from the Never Daunted Radio Network, you know trust is pretty high up on our list. It’s the lubricant of society. When we trust one another, we get so much done; when we don’t, everything grinds to a halt. That said, trust is a tricky thing, and for trust to work, there must come with it a certain amount of responsibility and accountability from all involved.
The one of the worst qualities one can exhibit is blind trust. Blind trust brings with it zero responsibility and zero accountability. Blind trust is often confused with faith, and while many parallels exist, the clear difference between the two, at least from the perspective of your humble host, are as follows: Faith is based on belief, even if the beliefs are unfounded. There’s a certain amount of proactivity there, so even if one’s faith is misplaced, it comes from a sense of purpose.
Blind trust, on the other hand, is far lazier. Often, those who trust blindly have no idea why they trust what it is they’ve thrown their lot in with. Often, it’s a reflex motion, or even worse, because they simply don’t care to know any better. When it comes to the Internet, that’s something nearly every one of us is actively guilty of.
Before we go any further, it’s important to note that the purpose of this article is not to victim blame. When someone is legitimately wronged, as it is in the case of the number of actresses, singers and models whose personal images were shared without their consent over the weekend, blaming them for taking nude photos is both counterproductive and isn’t related in any way to a larger problem, the actual thing they and so many others should be blamed for.
Also, to be clear, the sharing of nude photos without consent is a problem that exists outside the realm of celebrities. While it’s unfortunate that your favorite model or actress was put out on display for the world to see, this is happening to so many other women (and men) without the same level of outrage that seemed to materialize out of nowhere in this case.
That said, the real issue at hand; what needs to be discussed and have blame assigned in the wake of this most recent incident (and really, it’s not even most recent anymore, as many other men and women you don’t know because you don’t see them on TV, movies or the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, are being exposed online without their consent and often without their knowledge), is the blind trust so willingly given to companies to store our data via the Cloud.
To bring it down to its base level for the average user, cloud computing is simply the process by which things are stored. While the Cloud is also used for networking and for sharing resources, it has always been sold as a way for users to keep their information centralized on the Web, for the perceived benefit of…well, it’s hard to say what the true benefit is, especially since the cloud, regardless of marketing, isn’t nearly as secure as it should be, especially to the level that people blindly trust it would be.
A recent survey from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) asked IT security professionals from top enterprise (more than 1,000 employees) companies to identify the biggest issues with the Cloud today. A third of them feel it’s a “lack of control with security operations directly related to cloud-based IT resources used for internal purposes.” Another third believe a huge problem lies in “privacy concerns associated with sensitive and/or regulated data stored and/or processed by a cloud infrastructure provider.”
Simply Googling, “Lack of Cloud Security” brings with it a myriad of articles featuring concerns that IT professionals and experts are way behind the curve with it comes to protecting the infrastructure that so many of us place blind trust in. If the very people who are tasked with protecting your data have doubts, why are we so willing to rely on a Cloud with holes?
Consumers spend billions every year on the newest and latest gadgets, from smartphones to tablets to laptops. Most of these devices come with some level of cloud sharing built-in. Since the nude photos made their way to 4Chan via the /b/ image board, there’s been a swell of scrutiny on Apple’s automatic sharing of images to iCloud, with many people acknowledging that they had no idea that their devices were automatically backing up their precious data, particularly their photos.
Much of the problem that exists with cloud storage comes from the fact that people simply don’t know how to use it. They know it’s there, and companies like Apple (through their now-vilified iCloud service) “make it easy” for people to store and ultimately share their files with little effort. In fact, they’ve made it so easy, most users have no idea they’re even loading their precious data to the Cloud in the first place. That Apple made cloud sharing into a benefit of sorts, if people have no idea how it works, how can it really be a benefit? Apple is an expert at selling their brand new everything, but they fail pretty miserably when it comes to showing people how to effectively use their new tech up front.
To be clear, it’s still uncertain how the photos were procured. There are a number of ways it could’ve happened, and many who’ve seen the photos in question remark that not all the phones look like iPhones. Whether or not iCloud or any other cloud storage network had a flaw that could be exploited (and it did), until there is evidence as to the methods used, consumers must shoulder an equal amount of blame.
This means you.
Taking nude photos is not the issue here, nor should it earn scorn for Jennifer Lawrence or Kate Upton, however, internet security is everyone’s responsibility
That people so blindly trust that these companies to handle their data without having at least a fair understanding of where the information goes, and how it’s being shared, lays blame completely in their court. While it’s not proper to blame Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, or any of thousands of people whose most intimate photos end up on the Web for taking those pictures in the first place, it is their fault for not doing everything they could to make sure their data and information was safe. The accountability and responsibility of the user is paramount to ensuring that the things they want to stay safe stays safe.
It’s easy to point the finger at companies for not keeping their customers safe, but the age of the Internet made us all lazy and careless. People look at the Internet as just a place housed within their devices; by now we should all know it’s anything but that. Maybe during the advent of home computing, everything you had, every thing you did was kept within the hard drives you had in your machine, but now that more and more is operated by the Cloud, your devices are simply portals. What you stash is not your own so long as you allow someone else to hold it for you.
It’s time to get smart about your Web presence. It’s time to get smart about what you put in the Cloud, and you damn well better get smart about what’s being put in the Cloud for you. Because if you don’t know, if you don’t care, or if you’re so willing to put blind trust into companies and technologies without any level of responsibility or accountability, it could be your naked body up for everyone to see…and share.
Chances are, it probably already happened.
Hashim R. Hathaway (Uncle Shimbo) is the host of the Never Daunted Radio Network, and proud father to NeverDaunted.Net. You can reach him on Twitter @NeverDauntedNet