As my experienced IT friend said today on Facebook: "At some point, the world will realize that

[sir pball]

'the cloud' is really just 'someone else's computer.'"

That's right, kids - "backup my pictures to <teh intarwebz> is DUMB. I won't blame you for having them leaked, I didn't blame myself for having my window smashed with a brick and my glovebox rifled, all for leaving an iDevice charging cable on my seat...but HAVE SOME FUCKING FORESIGHT. I didn't blame myself, in fact I wanted to go out hunting with my assault rifle - but I also realized I probably shouldn't have baited with evidence there was an iDevice in the car. And that being said, while I have used my phone for, ah, "personal issues" - I instantly transfer said "issues" to a double-encrypted folder on my laptop and make damn sure there's no backups. Convenience has its price..

[MohRokTah]

1. Or a series of computers. eom

[marym625]

2. I use Adobe Acrobat

For work constantly. They now have it set so I can't uncheck "save online."

I am sure there is a way, but I can't figure it out. I am a computer idiot.

[SwankyXomb]

5. Change programs?

I'm using Foxit for PDFs these days.

[marym625]

6. my boss bought it

I can look into it though. And certainly will for any personal work.

Thank you

[bvf]

11. I wouldn't be so sure.

Most applications that are networked allow your network administrator to lock certain options.

Be nice to your network admin.

As for the whole "cloud" thing, the sooner people figure this out the better. My own take is that the term was foisted upon users to discourage them from thinking too much about it.

[marym625]

12. I am one of the administrators

Don't know what I am doing. Neither does my boss. And we're it.

[bvf]

21. My first step would be to contact Adobe

or whoever owns them, if that applies. I've long ago given up on trying to keep track of such stuff, but it would only take a couple of seconds to find out.

If their customer service isn't helpful, I'd let them know in no uncertain terms that I intended to look for another product that better suited my needs.

Hell, spend $200 for a consultant if it comes to that.

[marym625]

24. Thank you

I will. Appreciate the advice

[bvf]

26. You're very welcome!

Hope you get it all straightened out.

[raccoon]

44. Undoubtedly. I never thought much about it until I got into this thread. nt

[BlueJazz]

3. Amen. "Your private prized files are perfectly safe in 'My bank Vault" or other such storage names.

Ahh...yeah...Maybe...Maybe.

[PoliticAverse]

4. Also this whole 'password' thing isn't working well. n/t

[Lex]

7. And my money's not really in the vault at Bailey Building & Loan Association?

Well, whaddaya know.

[msanthrope]

35. Perfect post. nt

[lpbk2713]

8. "Your personal data is safe with us."

Now where have I heard that one before?

[hfojvt]

9. leave the cloud alone!!

[Art_from_Ark]

13. Maybe the lyrics should be updated slightly

"Hey, hey, you, you, get out of my cloud..."

[mindwalker_i]

10. If you leave $1000 on the seat of a convertable with the top down

What do you think will happen? If you leave $1000 on a car seat that isn't a convertable, what do you think will happen? It's not "right" for someone to steal it, but leaving that $1000 there is just plain fucking stupid. The same goes for computers on a huge network. Leave naked pictures there (and people do want to see them), what do you think is going to happen? Yeah, I'm blaming the victims here for being dumb-asses.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

36. Flawed analogy...

Leave $1,000 on a car seat, and it is visible to passersby. Take naked pics and put them in private cloud storage, and they are NOT visible to anyone but the account holder.

[mindwalker_i]

37. "Imperfect analogy" would be better

Celebrities are more likely to be hacked, just by the nature of the attention focused on them, and the hackers are likely to be looking specifically for pictures.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

40. Right, but those pictures were not

out in the open. They were behind closed doors with no window to peek in.

[mindwalker_i]

43. Fair enough

I concede that there was a non-zero effort to keep them not in the hands of the general public (pubic?). Regardless, given that there have been MANY stories of hacking, vulnerabilities specifically in Windows, and just the fact that "cloud storage" is storage that one does not own, can't do much to secure - beyond encrypting their own files - that it would be somewhat obvious that it would be a bad place to store image of oneself naked.

The other aspect is that dudes like to see chicks naked. Evolution has made us that way. I read an article a while back that looking at such images causes the relief of endorphins, so this might be something like a drug addiction. One argument I've seen here is that men should just be able to control themselves, but do you know anyone who's tried to quit smoking? Hell, if you saw $1000 lying around, how well would you do trying to ignore it? Intelligence and hence, morality, are functions of our higher brains, but the base needs and instincts are still there, underneath. Temptation is non-trivial.

[iamthebandfanman]

14. clouds are a terrible idea

for your average personal user..
why anyone would think other wise, ill never know..

its too easy these days to encrypt entire drives..
lord knows I have one

[R B Garr]

15. That is absolutely hilarious! Brilliant!

"someone else's computer". So true.

[Aerows]

16. Experienced IT friends

don't have Facebook accounts.

[sir pball]

17. Oh, we all do, we just know..

..that any information Zuck et al. have access to is automatically public. My friends wonder why I don't "insta" every second of my life...access control begins with knowing what data is accessible in the first place.

[Aerows]

19. I refuse.

Don't have one, don't want to have one.

[Jasana]

18. FYI. Some...

experienced IT friends may be required to have a "work" facebook account. Nothing is posted there but clean white noise. I worked in IT for awhile. Enough to know that I only use the cloud to backup my LOLcat collection and my "real" FB account is fake and only used when I'm bored and want to play a silly game.

[Aerows]

20. The day I'm required to have a *legitimate Facebook account

is the day I quit.

[BrotherIvan]

46. Your LOLcats need to be distributed

[mrsadm]

22. I am so glad someone finally said this!

I've been in IT for 27 years. "Cloud" is only a marketing term. It's just like a guy you don't know, saying, "you can store your belongings in my garage; you can trust me."

"Where is your garage?" ... "Do you have a security alarm? Perhaps a dog that barks?"

"Just trust me (and don't read the fine print&quot

Yeah, right.

[Ex Lurker]

23. Another post in that along the same lines-and why your security questions aren't that secure

. I've also read today that there was a ring of celebrity picture traders that have been in existence for some time. To get in the circle, you have to provide pictures yourself. An outsider got in, decided to release some of them, and it all came crashing down. Expect several arrests.

Another thought I had is this may be an inside job. Some personal assistant with an axe to grind or looking to cash in, passes along an email addy and/or password.

The following are someone else's words, not mine:

"As someone who knows exactly how this is done, let me explain you don't all think all of iCloud has been hacked. Here's how it works.
Your iCloud is linked to an email address. That is the first thing that needs to be found. Finding this for the average person is fairly easy (Facebook?), but a celebrity, well I'm not sure how because I've never tried.
Next you have one of two options. Hack the email address itself or go to apples "Forgot my password" page and reset the password via security questions. You will need their birthday and the answer to 2 of 3 security questions. Once you do that, voila, you can now reset that persons iCloud password.
Next you go into a program that can download a backup of that iCloud (there are quite a few but really just one main one the people who do this use, shouldn't be hard to google). And there you go, their entire iCloud backup is on your computer for your viewing pleasure.
How to protect yourself? Make your security questions impossible. Also enable two step verification that requires a text message.
But, also consider this. If you have a Verizon phone, and a MyVerizon account, you are in danger of having all of your text messages intercepted. This works the same way as above (security question) except it's often much, MUCH, easier. Then the hacker can turn on integrated messaging on the Verizon website and see every text message sent or received thereon (expect iMessage texts). This enables them to easily reset the password for any account linked to your phone number.
The lesson, don't make stupid security questions. Your pet's name? It's probably in a Facebook photo caption or those stupid surveys we all took. Your first address? Spokeo.com. Your first car? Your first job? Your birthplace? All easy to find. Even your oldest cousin or your favorite aunt or uncle.
Just be safe and remember that nothing that reaches the internet is 100% private."

[Chan790]

47. Social de-engineer your security questions.

Take a question. Answer with a non-sequitur that you will consistently use. You can keep a memory sheet if need be.

What was your first address?

Hotdogsundae

What was your first school?

Jesus Christ Superstar

What was your first pet's name?

621 Michigan Ave. NE

What was your mother's maiden name?

Brooklyn4life


Good fucking luck breaking into any of my accounts via social engineering.

[Boreal]

25. I think a huge problem is

that millions of people don't know jack about computers and cyber stuff. I include myself, a complete moron when it comes to the computer. I'm old and just never had the opportunity to learn and I don't find any of it "intuitive". I just use thing like I drive the car and know nothing about what's under the hood. I need a serious computer education but don't know where to get it. When I have a problem and go online to, say, Mozilla, everyone talks in terms I can't understand so I'm immediately lost. People who are tech savvy know the risks. Most people don't.

[lovemydog]

28. Local community colleges

offer continuing education classes for adults, many in computer basics. These classes are usually inexpensive. Another possibility is finding a younger person who you trust and like, who can assist. Either pay them by the hour or trade them for stuff you have and no longer need. Many are willing to do either. You could consider putting a sign up at a local coop or whole foods type of place that has a kiosk. Hope that helps a bit.

[Boreal]

29. Thank you for the ideas

Many times I've said I need a teenager I'm one of those people who never mastered programming the VCR!!!

[steve2470]

32. try this site also and our Computer Help and Support group

http://www.seniorsguidetocomputers.com/

Computer Help and Support group: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1095

We're pretty friendly and helpful to everyone. Most posters there can run circles around me, so I don't say much.

[Boreal]

45. Awesome and

thank you. I'll check it out. I must say, though, I will resist thinking of myself as a "senior" as long as possible, lol.

[johnlucas]

27. Yeah! Who started all this "cloud" talk anyway? Isn't that just a server?

Cloud computing ain't new.
But all of a sudden everybody's out here with "the cloud" "the cloud" "the cloud".
Isn't that just a server or a remote access linkup?
Educate me if I'm talking out of my ass.

I like Offline options myself.
I still copy my files offline to external hard drives & discs.
Might be extra work but it's not all out there willy-nilly.

For unimportant stuff, yeah cloud's alright.
For important stuff, keep offline backups.
That's how I roll anyway.
John Lucas

[Kablooie]

30. The cloud is turning out to just be the whole internet.

To store your photos in the cloud is to store them on a million young men's computers.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

[randome]

33. That song came up on my iPod just yesterday!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]

[dickthegrouch]

39. ROFLMAO

That's one of my favorite songs to sing in the Karaoke bars. I'm an experienced (but unemployed) computer security engineer and I've never even dreamed of the connection to those words.

You just gave me the intro to the talk I'm giving at a conference soon.

[defacto7]

31. That's the name of the game. n/t

[trumad]

34. It really is as simple as that for personal users.

Most large corporations have their own cloud setup and it is quite effective.

No matter...The errr cloud is here to stay.

[L0oniX]

38. Cloud Nine is the only safe one.

[dilby]

41. All depends on how you want to use it.

I keep all my media in the cloud so I can have access to it no matter where I am (where I have network or cell service), my Amazon video collection is around a terabyte and my music is around 400 gigs, I don't want to lug around external devices or fill my hard drive with items I only access occasionally. Cloud is also not just used for storage but processing power, it can be cheaper for someone to rent cloud servers for stuff that requires a lot of processing power over purchasing the servers and with the rental they can spin up as many servers as they need for a job and then spin them down when they are not needed.

[Xithras]

42. The fundamental problem isn't "the Cloud", it's the concept of the password.

The problem with web security is primarily that it depends on passwords, which are one of the worst ways to secure a service. It's also the way that virtually all web services are secured. The problem is simple...any password that you can easily remember can be brute forced with relative simplicity. There are roughly 172,000 words in the English language. About a third of them are regularly used in passwords. Toss in the most common forms of "obfuscation" (capitalizing the first letter, adding numbers at the end), and the overwhelming majority of password protected resources can be cracked in a few hundred thousand attempts. An incredible number for a human, but a trivial feat for a computer running a script.

Lots of companies have jumped through lots of hoops to try and prevent this sort of thing...forcing additional capitalization, other characters, etc,. but most security and usability experts admit that these efforts amount to little more than moving the goalposts a bit. The intruders have to do more work, but the job remains largely the same.

The only real solution is to move away from the use of passwords entirely. There have been countless proposals for alternative authentication methods that would do away with the traditional "username/password" model entirely, and some really do work (we only permit two-factor at my current job), but none have caught on and none have achieved the kind of momentum that is really needed to do away with passwords entirely.

Until this is fixed, stories like this will keep occurring. The problem isn't inherent in the Cloud, but in the fact that the fundamental security model used by nearly the entire Internet is flawed and weak.

For a great synopsis of why passwords are a terrible way to secure things, take a look at Lorrie Cranor's TED Talk from earlier this year. She lays the issues out far better than I could ever hope to do.
https://www.ted.com/talks/lorrie_faith_cranor_what_s_wrong_with_your_pa_w0rd