Celebrity smartphones/Apple I-Cloud hack of August 2014

[Cap'n Zippy]

Many years ago, when I "knew people," I had a friend in Hollywood who was a collector and private auctioneer of celebrity ephemera. One item that had come into his possession was a portfolio of nudes posed by Grace Kelly. These were taken in days when the Hayes Code kept nudity off movie screens and there was no legitimate market for a celebrity to pose nude, they were taken for reasons subsequently obscured by time. My friend, who had seen an impressive list of A-list actresses in similar photos, offered his own theory that this was Kelly's way of marketing her sexuality without resorting to the casting couch. Had the pictures ever been made public (and in the intervening twenty years, I've never seen one of them even on the Interwebs), Kelly would only have had to claim that they were "private photos" that had been stolen, or the old reliable "I was young, I needed the money" defense.

The point is, it is nothing new for actresses to traffic nude images of themselves for a variety of reasons. If the photos are ever made public, they have plausible deniability (private images that were stolen by unscrupulous hackers). They get all the press, a measure of public sympathy, and no harm done. A few "cease and desist" letters gets the pics taken down from most major sites, and life goes on. Far less collateral damage than actually posing nude, since one doesn't have to worry about their body being scrutinized by the mainstream press or the public at large. And far less traumatic than appearing nude on film, knowing that a lot of those DVDs are being used for "personal entertainment" and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.

Witness Scarlet Johansson. Her allegedly private, and relatively modest, nudes were "leaked" all over the Internet, she played the victim card to a T. But with 30 coming on fast, and her expiration date as a hot young starlet approaching, she had to resort to putting out the full monty in the relatively unwatchable Under the Skin. No actress wants to end up in the lonely Hell of the Formerly Hot.

Or, consider Vanessa Hudgens. Desperate to shed her Disney image, she let slip some fairly impressive nudes. When that failed to jump start her career as a Real Movie Star, she brought out the clam (knowing full well that the pictures, ostensibly taken when she was underage, would almost immediately disappear from all but the darkest corners of the Web). And again, there's nothing new under the sun. Disney darling Hailey Mills even hauled out the girls on film back in the day to create a clear line of demarcation between her past and future roles.

So, forgive me if I am somewhat skeptical that these were all private property intended for privileged eyes only and that all these women are just unwitting victims. Everyone who has come of age during the Internet Era knows implicitly that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for anything connected to a vast network of individual devices. As we know, one of the first rules of the Internet is that it is a postcard, not a letter.

[WickedUnclErni]

Originally Posted by CooperTrooper;

fake she is not shaved

Ummm... pubic hair is a renewable resource. To say "she is not shaved" is to imply that she has never been shaved. It is certainly possible that she shaved/waxed for a role/event/appearance and decided to capture a pic for personal posterity.

[ball7]

Originally Posted by WickedUnclErni

Ummm... pubic hair is a renewable resource. To say "she is not shaved" is to imply that she has never been shaved. It is certainly possible that she shaved/waxed for a role/event/appearance and decided to capture a pic for personal posterity.

Thank you Wicked, that made me smile

[pharoahegypt]

though i agree with uncle above, the pix i've seen from the hack clearly show her with no pubic hair in any case... but the pic above is the work of a fakir, as the pubis just looks wrong, too straight and wrong shade/colour. if the image was larger he'd have had little chance of passing it off in the places he has so far already.

[rotobott]

I downloaded a more than 1gb torrent of this stuff, before it mysteriously got removed from another site, massive amounts of duplicates maybe 90 percent, the Michelle Keegan picture was just a pair of anonymous tits, could have been anybody, and has long been posted before, don't bother with it.

[John C. Holmes]

After examination, I would gather a guess that many of the close up boob shots of Kate Upton are a different girl entirely.

[DTravel]

Originally Posted by Norman Stanley Fletcher

Has anyone seen this narrative online that this leak didn't occur because a bunch of celebrity women carelessly put their nude pics on i-cloud and some valiant hacker found them with very little fuss and then shared them out of the goodness of his heart but that for many years a select nude celeb pic trading ring has been operating, the value of individual pics increased by the scarcity. The object is not to have these images widely available but strictly exclusive. Recently a new member referred to as 'the rich guy' bought his way into group buying up a selection of images which he then released as 'the fappening', these images are all that are available, the list that's been doing the rounds includes images only available in the group that will almost certainly not go public anytime soon (if presumably they ever would have). Knowing that their cover may be blown some members of the trading group offered up images for donations but as the authorities began to crack down these are unlikely to appear.

The mainstream media story is all about i-cloud, presents the story as careless silly attention-seeking women making fools of themselves by daring to take nude photos of themselves and rightfully getting their comeuppance and generally sends out a warning that young women should avoid doing this sort of thing (boo!).

But the truth of the matter may be less cut and dried, less black and white.

I've seen the narrative presented above in various places and 'a friend' told me something similar, that there are lots of images out there but they are in the hands of people who aren't interested in sharing with you and that this leak rather than opening the floodgates is more likely to shut them down completely.

Time will tell, I guess.

This is the story I've heard as well and there is some evidence to support it. The images that have been released were taken over the course of years and in at least one case they were deleted years ago. It doesn't appear that all the material was on iCloud at one time to be downloaded by a single hack.

[MrInBetween]

Originally Posted by scottx

Too much thought and why would someone hoard nude pics? Seriously?

I was thinking of starting a thread (after Mock The Week) called 'Posts you wouldn't expect to see at VEF' but I didn't think I'd be able to find any material...

[Norman Stanley Fletcher]

Why would they hoard nude pics? To increase their trading value, keep it within a small circle of fellow hackers and trade accordingly... I appreciate that goes against everything VEF holds dear and that's why, if it's true, I think it sucks

[Norman Stanley Fletcher]

Originally Posted by bigbobnobody

If you didn't come to VEF, to either look at naked pictures of women, look at videos of them, or share either, then in my opinion, you need to mosey on down the trail. Now you may come here now to visit your friends that frequent this wonderful joint......but that's not why you by gawd originally came here, and if it was to make a pitch on the morality of looking for or at naked pics of women, hacked without the person portrayed's approval, then go back up to what was written above, about mosing the hell on outta here.

So, you're effectively saying that me and people like me who have concerns about these pics and how and why they became available have no place at VEF?