Putting It All Out There

Over the weekend, we learned that someone hacked into internet "cloud" accounts and stole hundreds of nude photos of several Hollywood A-list celebrities. As expected, the affected celebrities are now in damage-control mode as the photos potentially make their way around the internet an onto a website near you.

A few of the people who were reportedly caught with their pants down were actresses Jennifer Lawrence, singer Rihanna and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Kate Upton. And last year, actress Scarlett Johansson was the victim in a similar incident. The guy was eventually caught and sentenced to 10 years in jail but not before he leaked the nude photos of Johansson. What a dumbass! If he wanted to see Scarlett Johansson naked, all he had to do was rent "Under The Skin" from Redbox.

Is it wrong to hack into someone's emails or private websites? Is it wrong to steal from, and in many cases, blackmail these folks with their own intimate moments? Absolutely.

But here's the thing that I don't quite understand. Why do people, especially high-profile celebrities, put themselves in these situations? Unless you're a bonafide exhibitionist, why would you take a photo of your junk and then upload it into cyberspace? Once that image leaves your computer, there's no guarantee that it's going to be secure. Just look at some of the recent hackings that have taken place. Just today, I read that someone hacked into Home Depot's computers and may have stolen a massive amount of credit card data. If this type of thing can happen to Target and Home Depot, does that full-frontal digitized image of your nether-regions really stand a chance?

I don't get it. Do these people wake up one day and say, "Hey, I think I'll snap some 10-megapixel photos of my package and upload them to an online storage cloud somewhere out in cyberland?"

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Hey, I'm not naive. I know this type of thing has been going on for a long time. But as least back before the digital age, you had the option to tear up the the photo and burn the negatives. Not today. Once you put something online, it's virtually there forever and there's no telling where it might end up. But still, countless people everyday continue to post incriminating messages and compromising photos that will ultimately come back and bite them in their ass. Or, in this case, their bare ass....

kw