I mentioned in my last post that I am going to talk about certain issues that have arisen with technology. Yesterday, it was about “selfies”, and today it is about “The Fappening” as well as “The Snappening”.

If you aren’t familiar with those terms, “The Fappening” relates to a recent event with Google where certain photos were hacked from the company’s cloud service. As a result, a lot of actresses have found explicit pictures of themselves leaking online. Some of them include Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Rihanna, and they are upset. They have even filed a $100 million dollar lawsuit against Google, and Lawrence has even called the incident a “sex crime”.

It is called “The Fappening” as an Internet reference to masturbation, which is presumably what these leaked pictures are being…you know what, I’d rather not think about that. A related event known as “The Snappening” has taken place, where users on 4chan claim that Snapchat or some third party application that works with the popular app has been hacked. If you are not familiar with Snapchat, it is a photo application where you can send a photo to someone, and it will automatically delete itself in the receiver’s phone’s memory. I’ll let you decide what some users use that for.

I’ve written about those incidents on The Gospel Herald, and you can link to the articles above. I don’t know if I will write there on a permanent basis, but I have been thinking about these incidents.

In fact, they are related to another incident with JPMorgan Chase. Their bank was hacked, which means a lot of users’ information was taken. Oddly enough, the passwords are not changed. I’ve heard similar news from KMart and Dairy Queen saying that their payment card data has been stolen.

Okay, you know what this tells me? We are not safe. Please don’t get paranoid over this. I know we all feel safe in our homes, for the most part, but they can be broken into. The fact that they don’t get broken into daily doesn’t prove that society is basically good, but is willing to respect certain boundaries. In the same manner, our accounts and personal info can be hacked.

This is why I don’t put anything explicit on a cloud service. I’m not trying to “blame the victim” here. I’m sure all those victims of “The Snappening” probably had passwords, but hackers live to work around them.

I honestly don’t know what the solution is for this problem. I don’t think Google has the power to erase any information stolen from their clients’ personal accounts. If they had a button that could do that, I would be afraid. This is good and bad part of the Internet. When you put something out there, it is out there. Why do you think that cyberbullying is an issue? Because people that bully in person can be ignored for that temporary inconvenience, but posting something negative on someone’s wall can be really hurtful and stays as long as the Internet works.

I suppose the thing that can be learned is try not to put anything out there on the Internet that can be used against you. But if it is used against you, face up to it. Personally, I know that a lot of things are going to happen to me that I probably don’t deserve, so I’m guessing that I’m supposed to deal with it as it comes.