Should You Avoid Photo Stream After the iCloud Hack?

Apple should be getting ready for their biggest week of the year, with new iPhones and a possible new product in the iWatch expected to be announced next week. Instead, they are dealing with the biggest PR disaster in the company's history. With dozens of female celebrities becoming the victims of a systematic hack of their iCloud accounts, you might be wondering if your photos are safe.

Was iCloud Really Hacked?

This wasn't a case similar to Sony or Target, who had their systems hacked and millions of sensitive customer records stolen. iCloud itself was not hacked. The personal accounts of these celebrities were hacked, which means the hackers used the login information and 'hacked' the password for the account. 

That won't make Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst and the other celebrities that were victimised feel any better, but it does make this case more like Scarlett Johansson's phone being hacked than Target's servers being hacked.

Is there an iPad virus?

Should You Turn Off iCloud's Photo Stream?

I recommend turning off Photo Stream if you are constantly banging your head against the limits of your storage space, but I would not recommend turning it off because of this hack. The accounts were specifically targeted because of the celebrity status of the victims, and unless you are a celebrity, you should be safe.

However, it is important to realize that almost any system can be hacked. We've seen too many major companies fall victim to hacking, including banks and the government. While using Photo Stream as a way to backup all of your photos and/or sync them to your other devices is relatively safe, I would not recommend using any cloud-based system to store nude or inappropriate photos or videos.  How to be safe with your photo taking...

Photo Stream is a great service for those who take a lot of photos with their iPhone or iPad, and Apple is going to expand this service in the next version of iOS. With no major breach of iCloud as a whole, there is no reason to think your photos (or any other information you choose to store on iCloud) are in any danger.

How Do I Turn Off Photo Stream?

If this case makes you uncomfortable storing your photos on the cloud, you can easily turn off Photo Stream by going into the device settings, choosing iCloud from the left-side menu, tapping the Photos button in the iCloud settings and turning off "My Photo Stream."

You can continue to share photos among your devices by keeping Photo Sharing turned on and using shared Photo Streams. This will create a temporary copy of the photo on iCloud, but you can choose which photos to share.

تصنيف : iphone/ipod/ipad