I was at Home Depot on Sunday, buying flower pots and some lumber to repair the fence where Sadie the Dog has been plotting her escape. Checking-out of the Garden Department I handed my credit card to the cashier, who promptly dragged out an old zip-zap machine (that’s the technical term coined by BankAmeriCard 50 years ago) and took an impression of my card.
“You’ve been hacked,” I said.
“No, it’s just that my terminal is down so I have to do it the old fashion way,” said the cheery cashier.
“Don’t give me that, you’ve been hacked,” I said.
The lady behind me with fertilizer and a Jack Russell Terrier began to fidget.
“No, it’s just my terminal is down.”
“Are any other terminals in the store down, too?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
A couple days later of course we all know that Home Depot was hacked. It’s a testament to employee training that they were able to so smoothly launch into a lie, though lying to customers is probably not a good idea.
The company was taking a big chance on paper processing, too. What if I was buying a $4000 garden tractor? The way they were doing the transactions implied that Home Depot would rather have sold a tractor to someone who didn’t have the money to pay for it than acknowledge they’d been hacked.
This might be a policy worth reconsidering.
Apple, too, has some ‘splainin’ to do about this Jennifer Lawrence nude picture mess. The pictures reportedly came from iCloud, Apple quickly shipped a new software update to do, well, something, yet at the same time said a 40-hour investigation showed they had done nothing wrong, hadn’t been hacked, nothing to see here, folks.
That, too, is a lie. The patch was for some purpose, the pictures that got out weren’t intended to get out, therefore something was amiss. In AppleSpeak that something might have been poor password control on the part of Ms. Lawrence and her BFFs, but if that’s the case why not say so?
I see no long-term harm for Apple in this. Movie stars aren’t going to dump iPhones for Android just because of this incident, nor is it easy to even make a legal case against Apple as a data custodian.
The most interesting aspect of this nude picture thing to me is that some of the pics were distributed despite having been deleted long before. What’s with that?
Conspiracy theorists would conjecture that maybe nothing is ever truly deleted, but my theory is that the pics were harvested over a long period of time starting before the deleted pics were deleted. This means that somebody has been looking over Jennifer Lawrence’s alabaster shoulder for months at least, which is creepy.
The obvious rule here is don’t take nude selfies and especially don’t send them to anyone. But girls will be girls and you’ll recall there is even a naked Cringely picture or two floating through the Inter tubes.
Apple will nail some lumber over the hole, but this is far from the last time we’ll be reading stories about hacked retailers or leaked nude images of really big stars like my favorite, Abe Vigoda.
I believe you about the Apple part.
This past summer we were in Tombstone Arizona for the day. The electricity was out in the entire town. The only place where we could buy anything was at the Boot Hill Graveyard store that still had an old zip-zap machine and someone who knew how to work it.
The tourists were saved.
Just heard this one. If you want to make sure your nude pics are deleted and not hacked just store them on Lois Learner’s computer:)
Actually, on Android at least, my deleted pictures are uploaded long after they’ve been deleted (I normally delete them right after shooting cause they’re dark, blurred, …). Don’t know when the actual upload happens, but the notification comes usually overnight. Annoying cause my online backup is full of crap (and disturbing, of course).
You need to select “do not sync deletions”.
The cashier at Home Depot probably wasn’t lying deliberately. It’s highly unlikely that she was told anything by her manager except that the “system is down”. The store manager himself may not have known anything more than that.
The staff are not necessarily told what the top management knows, especially about sensitive issues.
It’s strange that someone as perceptive as Bob X. about the way companies are run would assume that a lowly cashier would be told anything about hacking before the issue was public, much less ‘trained to lie’.
Just to add: Cashiers at such places are paid next to nothing, work like slaves, have no job security, no benefits, no future, little or no company loyalty, and are regarded as completely disposable by management.
If a retail company wants to stop a matter going public, the last thing they would do is tell is their cashiers.
Obviously the company wanted to assess the damage and close the security loophole before the matter went public, which is not unreasonable. They would try to limit the knowledge of the hacking to as few people as possible.
I hate to stick up for a big corporation, but I’m going to here:
I’m sure many such companies exploit their workers mercilessly, but Home Depot does not. My mother-in-law worked there for eight years. They gave her full-time hours with benefits, at a decent salary, with paid vacations. They never forced (nor would they have allowed) her to work a minute of unpaid overtime. They maintained a safe workplace with decent conditions. They treated her, and her co-workers, with respect.
Sure, they got hacked, and they’re IT dummies, but they’re not Wal-Mart.
Home Depot’s founder told IBD a few years ago that if they had just opened the company under the current climate, they would not have done well. Obama’s regulations and anti-business attitude would have crushed them.
IBD makes The Wall Street Journal look like a bastion of liberalism, so that’s not exactly a surprise.
Mark D,
You have the best picture icon I have ever seen.
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I believe these old zip-zap machines needed a credit card with raised digits for the account number. Guess what? My last credit card did not have raised digits. It apparently assumed that the magnetic strip would always be used to impart that information. So long, thou obsolete zip-zap machines.
Somewhere, the founders of Tandy Corporation are rolling in their graves.
As Cringely was aware of the issue – then would be the time to blog report “I noticed while at home depot”. Clerk likely does not know beyond what Manager told her and further she doesn’t care, nor understand the issues involved. I have often found my elderly mother who will tangle with clerks on policy issues as if they are part the mangt. decision team. I repeatedly have to tell her “they don’t care”. Care does come from blogs/posts for which corporate PR “folks” search for any hint or worse negative trend on their corporate name. HD will be reading these comments.
I found it very strange Cringely presumed the clerk was lying. I also chimed in that of course the clerk wouldn’t be informed, most likely. I don’t know how Cringely would be so ignorant, but I have to suppose somehow he doesn’t know anything about retail or security practices.
As well, he presumed all of the blame should be on Apple, re: Jen Law’s photos. Let’s let the facts be found first, please, Bob?
The way I read the article, Cringely was not accusing the clerk of lying per se. Rather the accusation is leveled against the company. That is appropriate, too. The company management showed its character clearly in these events. The clerks are just do their job, which includes the company line on the circumstances.
Reasonable. Thank you for that.
As someone who has worked many years as a cashier, if one terminal is down, you use the other one- you don’t immediately pull out the zip-zap machine. Only if all the terminals are down, do you pull out the zip-zap machine- something no cashier enjoys doing (digging into a dust old box, slowing down each transaction, and creating extra paper work). So IMHO she was totally lying about that.
Agree that Apple could be more forthcoming about exactly what happened, but “don’t take nude selfies” just feels like blaming the victim. Taking the pictures from the phone (or iCloud or wherever) without authorisation is theft.
It stinks to have your privacy violated, it stinks worse when you violate your own privacy in the first place. If you use a device that is connected to the cloud– which is by definition a PUBLIC service– to take private pictures, then you’ve violated your own privacy by definition. Just because there are elaborate security regimes associated with the cloud doesn’t make it any less public.
The same logic applies to bank safety deposit vaults. They are nifty places to store stuff, except for the fact that (a) they are tempting targets for thieves and (b) if your stuff gets stolen the bank has no liability and you have no recourse.
What an idiotic assertion. The cloud is just a buzzword for some computer services. Icloud is a computer service provided by a private company, Apple. Apparently some hackers have taken advantage of some security holes on iCloud to gain access to some files placed on there by Apple customers. Those customers are clearly to blame for saving their nude selfies in the storage machinery of a company that has completely forgoten what computing is all about.
I think part of the problem is that Apple have been blithely encouraging the use of iCloud on their devices, trying to force you into using it when you upgrade or get a new device and setting defaults that assume you want to back your device up there. One of the things I’m really starting to dislike about my iPhone is its assumption that I want things (music, photos etc) in the Cloud for “convenience”.
So is it possible that at least some of these people thought their photos were only on their device, and that once they deleted them, they were gone. And that because of the device settings they were in the Cloud, and may still be there.
“… a company that has completely forgoten what computing is all about.”
What a great (and true) sentiment. Thank you for this!
“…“don’t take nude selfies” just feels like blaming the victim.”
Do you tell your kids it’s OK to leave their bikes in the front yard, or do you encourage them to lock them in the garage? Do you tell your daughter to be safe on the walk home?
@Stephen Darlington: Thieves will always steal, hackers are not giving up yet, Cloud content is only a password away. The Cloud can do with a better security/encryption etc, but even so, a hacker (NSA) may still get it. “Don’t take nude selfies” in this connected world sounds like a good advice.
… or at least don’t take them with a connected device. A good ole’ digicam that doesn’t have a mystery OS hacked/configured by the wireless provider to harvest your consumer data is probably safe – until you copy the pix to your laptop connected to your ISP.
What you’re seeing with the picture dump is probably just the tip of the iceberg. It looks like some 4chan kiddie has gotten into an argument with another member and deposited their personal picture collection in revenge. I’d bet that there’s a lot more to come out of this and while the majority of the pictures may be from Apple accounts, Google sync and other cloud services are probably just as easy to hack.
The operating mode with the pedophile groups seems to have been “show us your pics and I’ll show you mine” – and this is no different except that it’s more “newsworthy” since it’s more acceptable for the media to distribute cropped copies of Hollywood stars in the news reports.
“The obvious rule here is don’t take nude selfies and especially don’t send them to anyone.”
You should be ashamed for falling into this thinking. Should Home Depot’s obvious rule be to not accept credit cards? We’re they asking to be hacked? No– in each case data was stolen by criminals, pure and simple.
The hackers have way more than just these celebs’ pictures, but that’s the juicy part that has become public. Some celebs have claimed that the pics aren’t of them- are they also to blame for that?
“The pictures reportedly came from iCloud, Apple quickly shipped a new software update to do, well, something”
iCloud is a marketing term for a collection of features/products. There was no software update “shipped” for iOS or Mac, what happened was that hackers discovered that the login attempts for the Find My iPhone service were not rate-limited and apple patched that. They are definitely at fault for that bug- it was a weak link in user account security.
If the celebrities’ passwords were hacked then data could have been stolen from apple, google, microsoft, amazon… The link to apple was a conclusion jumped-to purely because the pictures become public the same day that the apple bug did. Supposedly, some of the pictures were taken with android phones…
Bob, it’s fun to come here and read your speculation about the future, but I feel in this case you are spreading ignorance when there are facts known.
Why should he be ashamed? He’s not blaming the victim, he’s saying think about what you’re doing, assess the possible consequences, and act accordingly. If you don’t mind having nude pictures of yourself circulating, by all means, take them on a connected device, store them in the cloud, and wait for the breach, because one will happen, whether because someone hacked your password or hacked into the servers your data is stored on.
Anything you put on an internet connected device is vulnerable. That includes the computer at your desk at home. The only difference between your computer at home and a cloud storage service is that with the cloud storage service you can pretend it’s their fault nude pictures of you are now floating around the interwebs.
aw, come on. are you ready for your nude picture to show up in bus shelters?
if they aren’t taken, they don’t escape.
and any piece of data that exists anywhere in the world is not secure.
It’s got to be possible to hold the two ideas of “if you don’t want to have nude pictures floating around, don’t take them” and “these people are victims of a crime and we should both go after the perpetrators and try to prevent future crimes” in our collective head.
Is it Jennifer Lawrence’s fault that her pictures were stolen? Of course not, and in no sense does she deserve this. That said, the advice I’ll give to my 3 daughters when they get smart phones is to understand that every picture, video or other data that is transmitted from them stands some chance of becoming public, perhaps widely so, and that should factor into their decision making when using their devices.
I’m not sure why encouraging people to do things to protect themselves is considered victim blaming–most people lock their car and houses, and would advise others to do the same, but understand when a car is stolen or a house burgled, it’s a crime and the victims are not at fault.
Agree that there’s a certain amount of blaming the victim going on. But do you leave your apartment or car unlocked these days? The increasing capabilities of the hackers mean that we all have to learn new security protocols to keep up. Just like the change from starter buttons to ignition locks in cars resulted in thieves learning how to hotwire the ignition, hackers will eventually defeat any security that is too simplistic. If you absolutely, positively don’t want your nude selfies (or any other sensitive data) exposed on the net at any time, better to keep them off the internet completely. Meaning any device holding them cannot have an internet connection.
(Yes, kids, there was a time when you didn’t need a key to start a car…)
(And yes, even if you keep your junk off the internet, you’re still vulnerable to traditional burglary, social engineering and other physical attacks)
For me the Apple thing might actually do them some harm. This is the first major news item I’ve seen that clearly demonstrates to the average consumer that the wall around Apple’s garden is full of holes where the creeps can get in. So the user gets all of the problems associated with a walled garden with none of the benefits.– and Apple loses a major selling point when compared with Android. OTOH, Android phones were also hacked in this episode, so it’s possible they take a fair amount of damage to their reputation, too.
This seems to be the best description of the Apple Hack. Someone, or more likely several someone’s, were running fake device restores from iCloud backups.
At least one of the photos was of an underage (at the time) girl, so now 4Chan is (once again) facing a child porn investigation. Couldn’t happen to nicer guys…
Moot has removed and is not allowing anyone to post the stolen pics on 4chan.
Here’s an idea: Let’s assume that the security that can’t be hacked hasn’t been invented yet. Based on that assumption don’t do or say anything electronically that you wouldn’t want your aged grandma to see, or for that matter everyone in the whole wide world to see.
How dull and boring?
Well unfortunately my “assumption” is almost certainly true. As exciting as it might be taking nude selfies in front of the bathroom mirror the millisecond you press that button you have committed your body to a thousand servers.
@wiredog
Apple has publicly stated that their iCloud systems were not compromised, however has indicated that usernames and passwords were attacked.
Apple stating that their iCloud passwords were not hacked sounds a bit deceptive.
My understanding is that the hack on Apple enabled unlimited rapid password attempts… so let’s call it “broken”.
I suspect they are very worried about a PR disaster; but blaming the victims seems like a risky tactic to me.
This is a very interesting read:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29045789
from the above article:
“But Mr Hypponen said that by focusing on protecting payments and IDs, Apple might have misjudged what customers care about.
“For many users they would rather have their credit card numbers stolen than their private photos,” he said.
“
Same thing happened to us at PF Changs a few months ago…took forever for the cashier to come back with my card and it was with the old zip-zap carbon paper for me to sign. I immediately had that card deactivated and a new one issued because the paper copy literally had everything from the card on it…and less than a week later they were in the news for being hacked.
The biggest non-physical difference between those celebrities and Abe Vigoda is that I’ve heard of Abe Vigoda.
Cringe… really, Abe Vigoda?
Vigoda?
you’ve been hacked, son 😉
No need to worry, Abe Vigoda has been dead for many years now.
Actually you’re wrong, and this is easily checked: https://www.abevigoda.com/
Not only is Abe still alive and kicking, but he was recently in a Super Bowl commercial a few years ago.
Apple’s problem isn’t the boobies that everyone is currently gossiping about, it’s the real secrets which have been exposed. Secrets that will cost people money.
The average C executive (and above) is about as smart on IT matters as any of the starlets are.
If they have an iPhone, and if the way the system is broken as a lot of people are saying it is, then real crime is happening.
Business plans, take overs, deals, schedules, insider information, emails and text messages has been exposed. Since the backup is basically one large data dump of the iPhone, it’s all in there.
Funny how again boobs are the distraction…
I’ll note that I was in a Home Depot not once, twice, but three times over the past weekend, and no zip-zap machines were present. On the other hand, most of the cashier stations have been replaced by those self-service checkout stations. Which I suppose were hacked too.
And thanks for putting the image of nude Abe Vigoda in my head. It’s going to take a lot of time and therapy to remove that.
In regards to deleted photos, perhaps they were simply deleted from the phone but not from iCloud.
Please. I’m sure you have had unflattering pictures too, but I would never say so in public.
[…] […]
Would you call these ladies, Apple Tarts?
A good rule to live by is printed on the banner of the Aspen Daily News – “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.”
I don’t know why you think the employee at Home Depot was “smoothly lying” to you. I very much doubt management would tell any employees if they’d been hacked, and most security departments in large enterprises will specifically instruct not to tell any employees especially in the early stages. Standard retail practice, for better and worse.
The obvious rule here is don’t take nude selfies and especially don’t send them to anyone. But girls will be girls
Whoa, and NO. That is really wrong and un-called-for. You are blaming the victim as well as furthering a seriously sexist attitude. As a respectable journalist I expect better of you.
First, “girls will be girls” is demeaning to women, adults, including the adult women who were the victims of this crime. Second, it obscures the fact that men (guys, boys, take your favorite) also photograph themselves undressed and share such photos. Finally, singling out “girls” somehow implies that it’s wrong for them to do it, but not others. All three are things I would rather not see you say.
To assert that people ought not to take nude selfies is (speaking as one old white guy to another) a failure to understand a basic human activity, particularly popular with younger people today. For that matter, nudes of all sorts have a long and storied place in public art, in porn, and in private communications. That these things get stored digitally and stolen remotely today doesn’t change the basic concept. Attempting to tell people not to take nude selfies is attempting to control peoples’ private sexuality. Again, that’s not something I want to see from any respectable journalist or writer.
Theft is theft, whether of physical or digital property. Offering stolen property for sale is another crime. Blaming the victims of these crimes is reprehensible. The fact that the victims are conventionally attractive female celebrities doesn’t change any of that.
Oh please, Alan, get off your soapbox and go peddle your politically-correct “New-Speak” elsewhere.
The LAST thing we need here on Cringely’s column is yet another politically-correct, it’s-all-the-fault-of-the-bad-old-white-guys attempt to demonize (and eventually restrict) speech that doesn’t jive with the latest speech-code restriction of the moment.
Funny how your uncalled-for response to Bob’s simple suggestion of a practical way to prevent personal items from being stolen is twisted and turned into an attack of the messenger’s message by re-characterizing it as something it wasn’t……using buzzwords like “reprehensible,” “sexist,” “demeaning,” “respectable” (as in not), etc.
In other words, you attack everything except whether or not what Bob says is TRUE……which it is. Sorry, my man, just as you are allowed to state your truth, Bob is allowed to state what IS true. By attacking him for that, is you who are sexist and disrespectful.
Pictures of nude women tend to perpetuate thruout our society and have more value, appeal and desire than nude men (although that is changing in our brave new world). You can no more rail against that than you can rail against Sports Illustrated for not having a men’s swimsuit issue (although they’ve come close). Nor can you rail against Bob telling women that the ultimate protection against nude selfie’s being hacked from the cloud is to not post them in the cloud in the first place (just as the ultimate protection from having your diamonds stolen from your house is to not keep them in your house).
Funny how “don’t post it if you absolutely want to make sure it doesn’t get hacked” advice seems to be acceptable about everything and everyone else, until you decide it was directed towards a protected class (multi-millionaire young beautiful celebrities).
The bottom line here, once and for all is……NOBODY IS TELLING PEOPLE NOT TO TAKE NUDE SELFIES. What Bob is suggested is not to take nude selfies AND POST THEM IN AN ENVIRONMENT KNOWN TO BE VULNERABLE TO HACKING AND THEFT. This same advice holds true for anything else that absolutely must not be stolen and made public, not just nude pictures.
Please, Alan…..take your type of politically-correct cliché-ridden rhetoric somewhere else, where it’s more appropriate, like HuffPo or Time Magazine websites. They love that kind of stuff there. This is supposed to be a technology column, for goodness sake. Can we please have at least ONE place left where this type of demonizing attack speech doesn’t intrude?
“You are blaming the victim as well as furthering a seriously sexist attitude.”
Wrong.
The idea that Bob is blaming the victim has been debunked in other comments on this thread so I won’t repeat it again. As far as sexism is concerned, have you ever considered that while men may take naked sefies, most of them probably couldn’t care less if someone else sees them? Women, on the other hand, seem to behave quite differently. Why do you think that is?
Now, if these women had been spied upon and photographed in the privacy of their own homes, by a third party, without their consent, the outrage would be justified. But that didn’t happen in this case– did it?
If you take a sexually explicit picture of yourself, your are objectifying yourself sexually– by definition. It is irrelevant whether that picture is seen by an intended audience or an unintended audience– it is still objectification. Women understand deep down that sexual objectification is not in their long term interests, either biologically or socially, or spiritually, and thus feel shame when they are exposed to an unintended audience. Yet we live in a post-feminist society that has attempted to indoctrinate this kind of shame out of women. The outrage they feel is simply the cognitive and emotional dissidence they feel when their indoctrination is exposed as being in direct conflict to their nature.
Your attitude seems to indicate that you are a victim of that indoctrination as well.
Here’s something you may find illuminating: https://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mallorymillett/marxist-feminisms-ruined-lives/#.VAW9lif7mH8.twitter
I don’t get this “lack of blame” discussion. If I foolishly leave my house unlocked when leaving on a vacation, there is a chance that my house will be burglarized. Common sense would be to lock my house and take other steps to minimize the chances of being burglarized. If I get burglarized, I can blame the burglar all day and night, but part of the reason for being burglarized would be my own foolishness. Call it “I’m not to blame” or “being foolish” as you will, it still would be partly my own fault that something bad happened.
.
The fact that a group of people believe in acting foolishly about certain activities has nothing whatever to do with the results. If you don’t want bad things to happen, use your common sense and don’t act in foolish ways about important matters.
I once witnessed a respectably looking old man start walking after a young women and threaten to rape her. This was in Turkey in 2009 and the young woman had a long dress but sleeves that barely covered her elbows.
By blaming the victim the man’s religion in this case has created men who feel obligated to, in certain cases, threaten rape.
Is this the road we want to take? Those affected don’t need to be told that if the photographs didn’t exist then this wouldn’t have happened. We should instead spend our energies to aprehend the criminals.
On the contrary. If these young women are in the habit of giving nude photos of themselves to their boy friends or posting them online or in the cloud, they do need to be warned against this foolish practice. The hackers also need to be tracked down and punished.
I agree that people should be warned ahead of time.
My gripe is with the “I told you so” blaming after the fact.. when it’s more than obvious and only serves to give excuses to the people leaking the photos.
I think Cringely’s comments i.e. “The obvious rule here” are apropriate as are your own. My reply might have been better placed elsewhere in the discussion tree. My apologies.
jjones,
I completely agree with your last remarks. No apologies needed.
Thanks for making the point Alan, it needed to be said.
“Girls will be girls” as a phrase has two problems: it’s now considered demeaning (and to the first approximation, extremely offensive this context), and it’s a truism into which the reader can pour their own meaning.
Either of which rule it out from civilised debate.
Bob:
Why the outrage about the nude pictures, and ZERO reaction to the fact that the NSA and GCHQ have been doing the same exploitative thing for years ON EVERYONE?….including politicians.
I wonder if Angela Merkel has selfies out on iCloud?
Don’t Jack Russell Terriers provide their own fertilizer??
In this age of constant oversharing of personal information and of periodic data breaches by private hackers (both foreign and domestic) and governmental hackers (both foreign and domestic), why does anyone assume that privacy is even achievable?
In all fairness, if I was CIO of Home Depot, the *last* person I would keep updated with the status of a high level hacking attack would be a minimum wage employee. Perhaps the cashier was purposely kept in the dark as might be deemed necessary by management until the situation was under control.
They are not going to tell the cashiers they have been hacked. They are going to shut down the terminals. Hence “My terminal is down.”
This comic came up in the Sunday paper. (Yes, I still get a paper – if only because I haven’t figured out the jujitsu to cancel it.)
https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/bizarro/s-1560974
Seems appropriate…
Seeing how some of the photos seem to have been stolen earlier, it leads one to believe that this was a premeditated attack on Apple (by Samsung, perhaps?) on the eve of both the IFA trade show and the Sep. 9 Apple event.
I think a more probable theory is that they don’t take out the trash on the iCloud very often.
Hey, Google keeps telling us that we don’t need to delete the junk in our Gmail accounts – that they’ll just “take care of it” somehow…
“Apple quickly shipped a new software update” … for what? I see nothing for either my iPhone or my iMac.
The iCloud hack may not hurt Apple, but it will probably boost PC sales, or network drives. Lot’s of people are going to start thinking twice about uploading their sensitive stuff to the Cloud.
I work at the Home Depot and have for over 11 years. I believe that the cashier’s terminal was down. It’s that simple. To have all cashiers at all 2,256 stores use the zip zap machines – now THAT would be news! BTW, my terminal nor anybody else’s that I’m aware of have been down for quite some time. But it does happen.
A point about the iCloud photos is the use of Photo Stream. It is separate and apart from the photo album/camera roll on iOS devices. At least that has been my experience. You delete the photo but it is still available via Photo Stream.
.
For my own use, I have turned off Photo Stream so all my images are now gone from it.
Facebook keeps photo links on its Akamai servers for accounts that has been permanently deleted 3 years ago. You can try it.
Lessons that will never be learned:
1- Don’t take nude / embarrassing photos
2- Don’t trust anything being safe on the cloud
3- Don’t hold customers credit card information for frick’n ever!
I have absolutely no sympathy for dumb celebrities having their nude selfies stolen. Mistake #1: you took a nude photo with an internet-enabled device. Mistake #2: then, stupidly, and perhaps by default, you backed up your data, including your photos, to iCloud. Well, now Apple owns that data, and your photos are on their servers. At that point, if you don’t proceed on the assumption that they’re public, you’re an idiot. And you deserved to be exposed. Mistake #3: you likely used an insecure password.
Thank god you can still buy hard disks.
Let’s stop calling the people who stole the photos “hackers”, and call them what they really are – burglars. Now, let’s say someone broke into Jennifer Lawrence’s home, and saw on a bookshelf a photo album, filled with photographic prints and negatives, determined that he might be able to get some money for them, and made off with the albums. What would we call that? Theft / burglary / larceny or whatever. The perp would be a thief.
It’s no different to breaking into an online account and taking stuff that isn’t yours – lets not obfuscate the issue, call it “hacking” and have everyone think “well, that’s not really a crime, and the victims were stupid for putting stuff on those computers anyway”.
A few years back I went to town to buy a part for my car. The parts store, a national chain, couldn’t sell me one. It was right there on the shelf, but they couldn’t take my money because all transactions had to go through their POS terminals, and they were all connected to a single server in Memphis. Everything was offiline, and their store policy was not to sell anything if the system was down.
Muttering, I left and decided to swing by a national fast-food chain to grab lunch. Same thing – all their cash registers were POS terminals, connected to the national mothership in Atlanta. People were in line, food was turning cold on the waiting shelves, but no transactions could be processed.
I had a pocket full of cash, but nobody would accept it.
Later I found that “the internet was down”, probably meaning some critical part of our local internet link went kaput. Oh, and my wife couldn’t buy gas – each of the three stations she went to, all the registers were POS terminals talking to servers in Oklahoma City.
Hey, it’s the Wombat guy. You know, Abe Vigoda! (carnivorous, corpuscular)
HI Bob,
Addressograph-Multigraph used to make those zip-zap machines. They had a big building in downtown Cleveland at E 9th and the Shoreway, which, as one might imagine, is now a parking deck. Technology Marches On.
Home Depot would have had problems with my new MasterCard, which is not embossed…
Robert X. Cringely — once again, right on the money:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/09/08/home-depot-credit-card-breach-april/15302569/
https://www.cnet.com/news/home-depot-confirms-suspected-customer-data-breach/
Good Lord Bob, I just found your website after all of these years! I thought you’d be dead in a drive-by pizza delivery by now, good to read you again…