Perhaps many have not thought about it, but websites security experts claim that celebrities are frequent victims of hackers and online extortionists. A few days ago the music group Radiohead was the victim of a hacker who stole unpublished material; now, it is actress Bella Thorne who has suffered an extortion attempt. A hacker threatened to post her intimate photos, to which the actress responded by posting them herself.
Through her Twitter account, Thorne posted the
photos, along with a screenshot of the message the hacker sent him, mentioning
that her accounts were hacked last Friday. “I feel gross. I feel watched,
I feel like someone has taken something very personal from me”, she
published.
The next day the actress stated that she felt
some pity for the person responsible for the theft of her photos, as he appears
to be a teenager no older than 17 years old; “He’s still a kid despite
what he did, we all make mistakes. I don’t want a child’s life ruined by a
moment of bad behavior.”
Websites security experts consider the constant
evolution of practices such as deepfake
poses a risk to anyone, whether famous or not, who has their image circulating
on the Internet. Deepfake eliminates the need to steal intimate people’s
intimate pics, as this kind of material can be automatically generated with
sufficiently sophisticated artificial intelligence software.
Victims should never plead guilty of such
incidents; however, it is important to highlight some safety tips to prevent
such crimes from happening.
A primary security measure is multi-factor
authentication. The login credentials of many users are easily obtainable,
using multi-factor authentication is added a new layer of security that will protect
the user even if the hacker has already obtained a username and password.
In addition, according to websites security
specialists from the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS),
essential measures such as the use of strong and unique passwords for each
online platform you use is the primary defense measure for safeguard our
important photos, messages or files stored on a web platform.
