A couple of days ago news emerged that several celebrities had their iCloud accounts hacked, and photos of these celebrities were posted online. Apple has since issued a press release, stating that, rather than being the result of a security flaw, it was a targeted attack on certain celebrities Apple IDs and, those that used weak passwords were compromised.
If you’re concerned about the strength of your password, and should like to set up two step verification for your Apple ID, check out Apple’s article here.
With a decent password, and two step verification in place, I think we’re fairly secure. But isn’t there always going to be a risk when storing sensitive data on the internet? I’m yet to be convinced otherwise. So we must behave responsibly. The simple solution is to not connect to the internet. But, from sending emails, to cloud services, and everything in between, it’s impossible to avoid.
The very near future for Apple’s products, and iCloud, looks like this:
In addition to its existing features, you’ll be able to store all of your data in iCloud:
- your entire photo library (the upcoming Photos app)
- all your other files (iCloud Drive)
This will be super convenient. With internet speeds going up, and the cost of cloud storage going down, it’s the perfect solution to having access to everything, everywhere, in sync, across all of your devices.
If you submit yourself entirely to this model, you won’t have to worry about how much ‘local’ storage space you have on a given device, and the responsibility of backing up will be a thing of the past.
But, a few concerns stand in the way of total submission to, and mass adoption of, this shift in the way we use technology:
1) What if your internet connection drops out? You can’t access all your data if it’s stored in the cloud.
For this reason, I won’t be getting rid of my mass storage, media serving Mac in my home, just yet. It’s nice to know I’m not reliant on an internet connection. I do, however, rely on electricity.
2) Privacy.
In light of recent events, all the snooping that goes on, and if you’ve heard of Big Data (masses of data that can be analysed to “spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on.”), there’s good reason to be concerned about taking your entire digital life online. Hacking aside, snooping on my emails and data for the purpose of international security and ‘making the world a better place’? That’s fine. I believe you.
3) Security
Those iCloud accounts that were compromised, it’s all part of “a practice that has become all too common on the Internet“. Hackers found a vulnerability. These things happen, apparently. If you don’t have any sensitive information stored in the cloud, or in your emails for that matter then, fine. But as a preventative measure, if you have any weak passwords, iCloud or otherwise, don’t wait until you’re the victim, update them right away!
Conclusions
I will continue to use cloud services. I like iCloud, and I’m sure i’m going to love the forthcoming updates to the service. But it’s my responsibility to set decent passwords, and change them once every while.
And when the internet connection goes down, I’ve got more than a few days worth of music on a USB drive to tide me over.
But the nude pics taken during that crazy summer holiday… I’m erasing them immediately!
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