Why espousing proper, basic internet security is not the same as "blaming the victim"

[seris]

The first thing that often happens are faulty comparisons. "Oh, sharing nude pictures is akin to robbery/identity theft/sexual harassment/sexual assault/rape." All these scenarios, which do often attract some aspect of victim blaming, involve an outside party acting with malice upon you; and although you can (and should, obviously) take measures to prevent them, they are largely unavoidable and *never* your fault. No style of clothing ever excuses rape; the blame for the rape falls squarely on the shoulders of the rapist.

As opposed to someone leaking naked pictures of you, that's totally your own fault?

Overlooking that someone else is to blame is victim blaming.

when it all boils down to it, it is their fault for taking the nude photographs in the first place. if they had not taken them then this would not have happened. she may be a victim but she is still responsible for her own mistakes.

When it all boils down to it, it is their fault for owning a car in the first place. If they had not bought a car, it could not have been stolen from them.

When it all boils down to it, it is their fault for having money in the first place. If they were penniless, it could not have been stolen from them.

When it all boils down to it, it is their fault for being born. If they were never born, they could not have been murdered.

That logic.

theres a difference between being an idiot and taking pictures of yourself naked and getting your car stolen. the first being something you can control, the second being out of your control. If you cannot see that then i cannot help you

 

[Sleepy Sol]

I don't think anyone needs to be told that nothing would have been leaked had they not chosen to upload any pictures at all.

Well, of course, I guess.

But when uploading pictures to storage sources that present themselves as highly secure, I'm pretty sure the majority of people are going to trust them not to drop the ball or potentially allow hackers to obtain personal information. Is that the smartest position? I don't know, but it's understandable.

 

[Skull Bearer]

The first thing that often happens are faulty comparisons. "Oh, sharing nude pictures is akin to robbery/identity theft/sexual harassment/sexual assault/rape." All these scenarios, which do often attract some aspect of victim blaming, involve an outside party acting with malice upon you; and although you can (and should, obviously) take measures to prevent them, they are largely unavoidable and *never* your fault. No style of clothing ever excuses rape; the blame for the rape falls squarely on the shoulders of the rapist.

As opposed to someone leaking naked pictures of you, that's totally your own fault?

Overlooking that someone else is to blame is victim blaming.

when it all boils down to it, it is their fault for taking the nude photographs in the first place. if they had not taken them then this would not have happened. she may be a victim but she is still responsible for her own mistakes.

When it all boils down to it, it is their fault for owning a car in the first place. If they had not bought a car, it could not have been stolen from them.

When it all boils down to it, it is their fault for having money in the first place. If they were penniless, it could not have been stolen from them.

When it all boils down to it, it is their fault for being born. If they were never born, they could not have been murdered.

That logic.

theres a difference between being an idiot and taking pictures of yourself naked and getting your car stolen. the first being something you can control, the second being out of your control. If you cannot see that then i cannot help you

They were being idiots for daring to take naked photos of themselves? Then you're an idiot for having money. Or a car. Or anything valuable at all, because ALL OF THESE CAN BE STOLEN AT ANY TIME.

You know what would be helpful and no victim blaming? Asking the fragging companies who are supposed to safeguard people's stuff to have better security. If a bank can't safeguard people's money, it should be pressured into getting better security.

 

[mecegirl]

theres a difference between being an idiot and taking pictures of yourself naked and getting your car stolen. the first being something you can control, the second being out of your control. If you cannot see that then i cannot help you

There is nothing inherently idiotic about taking nude pictures. And considering that those pictures were not put up on any site, but were on a site specifically for storage with security measures, there is no reason to be so judgmental. You act like these were pictures copy and pasted from tumblr instead in Cloud storage. You act like someone didn't have to HACK a website just to get to them. The pictures were stolen. STOLEN.

There are plenty of free naked pictures on the internet. Plenty of sources that are not password proceed, and even some that don't ask for age verification. But someone decided to hack a site to get to them instead.

 

[Private Custard]

When it all boils down to it, it is their fault for being born. If they were never born, they could not have been murdered.

That logic.

No, just don't take nude photos of yourself and then upload them to a cloud! Never trust anyone but yourself with shit like that.

 

[know whan purr tick]

theres a difference between being an idiot and taking pictures of yourself naked and getting your car stolen. the first being something you can control, the second being out of your control. If you cannot see that then i cannot help you

There's a difference between being an idiot and owning a car and getting naked pictures of yourself stolen. The first being something you can control, the second being out of your control. See how this works?

Wasn't the picture-theft a byproduct of the pictures being uploaded to the icloud? I don't know how clear this is in the TOS but I'm sure its buried in legalese. Can't the option to auto-upload to icloud be disabled or the sync feature de-activated (I honestly don't know the ins-and-outs)? Wouldn't someone have to agree to the TOS in order to use this service? Involuntary consent isn't an acceptable argument, "I didn't know what the contract said when I agreed because I didn't read it," at least from my understanding of how those walls of agreement text are considered in courts. They would be meaningless if anyone could say "I didn't read it, thus it doesn't apply."

I think there is a level of user-control in handling the photos and that it was preventable, given knowledge of what Apple was doing -uploading to icloud. Of course, this knowledge was not as common before this incident.

Say the car is in a secure parking garage and stolen. Who would be expected to pay damages? Would it be in the contract or are there laws to explicitly define fault?

I don't think its a sex-crime, I feel that serves to devalue what I would consider much more heinous crimes.

 

[Lieju]

Also I'd like to add that quite a lot of the victim-blaming comments I saw were just justification for why it was okay for the person to fap over them and/or enjoy the humiliation of the people involved.

I think the worst comment I saw was a response to someone saying some of the pictures might be child porn since the person in them was underage, which was:
"If I get in trouble for that I wish the ***** gets jailed for producing child pornography, serves her right."

Which was just...

I do't even know.

 

[DrOswald]

I don't think that was what he was trying to say. It's not that you shouldn't empathize and console those who were wronged, but rather that it shouldn't be the ONLY thing allowed, where all you can do is console them and not tell them that leaving their valuables on the kitchen table wasn't the greatest idea.

If I put my things on my kitchen table, in my house, I would expect my valuables to be safe. Because it's my house. I keep my doors locked. I keep my windows locked. I don't have an alarm, but then, I'm in a safe neighbourhood, and you wouldn't expect to.

The point I'm making is, sure someone could come in and take my wedding ring off my table. They could also take my TV and computer and all my other valuables. People regularly break into banks, Target, hack into other accounts and steal information from them. Should I never use a credit card? Should I not leave my money in banks? Wasn't there a huge DDoS thing on the Escapist while I didn't have internet just a couple of weeks ago? Does that mean I shouldn't use the internet at all?

Everything comes with inherent risks. Using Amazon, Dominoes, they may not have been broken into yet, but they could be. That doesn't stop people giving vital information. Passwords get stolen every day, and yet we continue using them. We don't blame people for shopping at Target when you find out that people broke in and stole information. After all, we assume some stuff are just secure.

And we would assume our phones are just as secure, or our computers are secure. Or that we can trust our husbands/boyfriends/girlfriends/wives to be as secure with our private pictures like that. When they can't be, or when people break into our clouds, computers, hack our phones, or just put up stuff they find, it's a shock of a breach of trust. A trust that we had in our electronics, or someone we had faith in.

Sure we can say "they shouldn't have done it," in a self righteous way, but how many of us haven't ever done something stupid? I mean, not to quote the bible here (because I'm not one of those people,) but it's kind of apt, he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that. We've all done things we're not proud of that might have come back to bite us in the ass, and while we can judge them, the kind and human response would be to empathise with them and say "we've all been there in one way or another, I'm sorry you're in this situation."

Of course you shouldn't stop using credit cards. But you should be aware of the potential security risks in doing so and work to mitigate those risks. You should check your credit card statements for suspicious activities, you should report a stolen or lost card as soon as possible, Don't use your cards on questionable sites, always be on the look out for fraud.

In other words, you should not be cavalier about financial security. Don't take it on faith that nothing bad will happen. Be financially responsible.

Similarly, you should also not be cavalier about securing of sensitive information.

Lets put this into perspective. A lawyer representing the group of celebrities at large is attempting to sue google for damages of 100 million dollars. Which means that these celebrities made a collective bet of 100 million dollars on the security of iCloud.

Many people in this thread say that they believed the iCloud service was secure. Where the hell did they get that idea? Why in the world would you think iCloud is $100,000,000 secure? Why would you think it is even $10,000 secure? The iCloud service has a history of failed security. But even if iCloud was Fort Knox it wouldn't have worked out, the service was not hacked. The passwords of the celebrities were guessed, which means their passwords were less secure than the password on the ghost email address I use whenever I need to sign up for junk email.

What happened to these people sucks. But it so easily could have been avoided. These people failed in every way at securing their sensitive information. They failed to vet the storage solution, they failed to take advantage of available security features, they failed to practice even the most basic information security strategies. I see nothing wrong with saying "That really sucks. You should know that this was very easily preventable. This is what you should do to minimize the possibility of this happening to you again."

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Yes I would and do agree with the fact that these pictures should not be online full stop and as far as I'm concerned there is no arguing this matter. You do not post stuff you do not want the whole world to see online. Taking the pictures and sharing them is fine but not via a cloud service as that is not a proper media to be sending/storing such items. There is victim blaming in this but saying that it was inappropriate to upload in the first place is just showing that some responsibility needs to be taken.

Don't get me wrong this is certainly an invasion of privacy and was a bad thing but it was 100% preventable as well. This isn't like its her fault for wearing the wrong stuff this is stuff that has been told by me to my seniors for years involving the internet and I would have thought people would be more aware.I also think they have no right what so ever to even think of suing Google.

Regardless, this should be taken like a Titanic like incident and actually have people add more life boats to shit or in this case don't post shit like this online ever. There is never a good reason to do it.

 

[carnex]

Well, there is a net positive that came out of this incident. And that is that Apple offered full phone encryption just like android does. Anything that's on it and that goes to the cloud from it can be decrypted strictly from the phone unless otherwise noted. Not even Apple can decrypt files in timely manner (I don't really know much time timely is but usually we are talking about 10^5-6 years of time to break encryption).

On the other hand, once both phone and your brains fail you can kiss your data goodbye. While that tradeoff is perfect for me, I don't know how many people will see it that way once they lose their stuff.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Also I'd like to add that quite a lot of the victim-blaming comments I saw were just justification for why it was okay for the person to fap over them and/or enjoy the humiliation of the people involved.

I think the worst comment I saw was a response to someone saying some of the pictures might be child porn since the person in them was underage, which was:
"If I get in trouble for that I wish the ***** gets jailed for producing child pornography, serves her right."

Which was just...

I do't even know.

Seriously? Someone said that?

I just want to add that I just... people... why? Why are people like that? It doesn't make any sense to me.

A few underage people in the US have been charged with child pornography for sending that sort of thing to each other.

 

[Lieju]

Also I'd like to add that quite a lot of the victim-blaming comments I saw were just justification for why it was okay for the person to fap over them and/or enjoy the humiliation of the people involved.

I think the worst comment I saw was a response to someone saying some of the pictures might be child porn since the person in them was underage, which was:
"If I get in trouble for that I wish the ***** gets jailed for producing child pornography, serves her right."

Which was just...

I do't even know.

Seriously? Someone said that?

I just want to add that I just... people... why? Why are people like that? It doesn't make any sense to me.

Entitlement?
They feel entitled to the bodies of those celebrities?
Those were another kinds of depressing comments; that since they agree to be in the public eye and have public careers it somehow implies consent for spreading ANY nude pictures...
(I spent quite a lot of time in different forums and comment sections due to some kind of morbid curiosity for the attitudes of people in this case. There were worse comments but I'm pretty sure that particular person really meant it. Became scared when being told they might end in trouble and their first instinct was to hope the victim gets punished)

And yet, humiliation of those people and feeling entitled to their bodies was why those people wanted to see the pictures.
There are nude pics on the Internet. Ones taken with consent, ones that presumably look more professional (since I'm assuming these pictures were amateurish?).
If you want to see naked people, you can quite easily.

But that wasn't what this was about, and quite a lot of the comments made it clear.
The victim-blaming in those cases was very much the kind of gloating of 'She made a mistake, now she will be punished via humiliation', which is just all kinds of icky.

 

[DrOswald]

I don't think that was what he was trying to say. It's not that you shouldn't empathize and console those who were wronged, but rather that it shouldn't be the ONLY thing allowed, where all you can do is console them and not tell them that leaving their valuables on the kitchen table wasn't the greatest idea.

If I put my things on my kitchen table, in my house, I would expect my valuables to be safe. Because it's my house. I keep my doors locked. I keep my windows locked. I don't have an alarm, but then, I'm in a safe neighbourhood, and you wouldn't expect to.

The point I'm making is, sure someone could come in and take my wedding ring off my table. They could also take my TV and computer and all my other valuables. People regularly break into banks, Target, hack into other accounts and steal information from them. Should I never use a credit card? Should I not leave my money in banks? Wasn't there a huge DDoS thing on the Escapist while I didn't have internet just a couple of weeks ago? Does that mean I shouldn't use the internet at all?

Everything comes with inherent risks. Using Amazon, Dominoes, they may not have been broken into yet, but they could be. That doesn't stop people giving vital information. Passwords get stolen every day, and yet we continue using them. We don't blame people for shopping at Target when you find out that people broke in and stole information. After all, we assume some stuff are just secure.

And we would assume our phones are just as secure, or our computers are secure. Or that we can trust our husbands/boyfriends/girlfriends/wives to be as secure with our private pictures like that. When they can't be, or when people break into our clouds, computers, hack our phones, or just put up stuff they find, it's a shock of a breach of trust. A trust that we had in our electronics, or someone we had faith in.

Sure we can say "they shouldn't have done it," in a self righteous way, but how many of us haven't ever done something stupid? I mean, not to quote the bible here (because I'm not one of those people,) but it's kind of apt, he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that. We've all done things we're not proud of that might have come back to bite us in the ass, and while we can judge them, the kind and human response would be to empathise with them and say "we've all been there in one way or another, I'm sorry you're in this situation."

Of course you shouldn't stop using credit cards. But you should be aware of the potential security risks in doing so and work to mitigate those risks. You should check your credit card statements for suspicious activities, you should report a stolen or lost card as soon as possible, Don't use your cards on questionable sites, always be on the look out for fraud.

In other words, you should not be cavalier about financial security. Don't take it on faith that nothing bad will happen. Be financially responsible.

Similarly, you should also not be cavalier about securing of sensitive information.

Lets put this into perspective. A lawyer representing the group of celebrities at large is attempting to sue google for damages of 100 million dollars. Which means that these celebrities made a collective bet of 100 million dollars on the security of iCloud.

Many people in this thread say that they believed the iCloud service was secure. Where the hell did they get that idea? Why in the world would you think iCloud is $100,000,000 secure? Why would you think it is even $10,000 secure? The iCloud service has a history of failed security. But even if iCloud was Fort Knox it wouldn't have worked out, the service was not hacked. The passwords of the celebrities were guessed, which means their passwords were less secure than the password on the ghost email address I use whenever I need to sign up for junk email.

What happened to these people sucks. But it so easily could have been avoided. These people failed in every way at securing their sensitive information. They failed to vet the storage solution, they failed to take advantage of available security features, they failed to practice even the most basic information security strategies. I see nothing wrong with saying "That really sucks. You should know that this was very easily preventable. This is what you should do to minimize the possibility of this happening to you again."

If you continued reading my responses, you would have eventually come to this:

I think the best way to avoid this is waiting a sufficient time from the "scandal", if you don't mind me calling it that, to talk about better procedures to avoid it happening again in the future.

To use an example from the OT, if your best friend came up to you and said they were pregnant and they were scared, because it was unplanned, you would usually wait a little while before bringing up the proper ways to not get pregnant in the future. Those first few weeks (or in this case days) would mostly be just showing empathy, helping quell the tides of idiots (and we know there will be idiots), and then when that has died down talking about future moves. This helps remove you from the mess of people that are just victim blaming, and helps the people that feel like victims (and in a lot of ways they are), know that you have their best interest in mind.

You can't just go into the mess and immediately start saying "Well here's what went wrong." It makes you look insensitive. It may not be what you're trying to do, but that's the way it comes across. You have to give someone a day or two to process. It's just the kind thing to do.

1 month 7 days. That is how long it has been since the leak. How long should we wait? 2 months? 3 months? A year?

 

[DrOswald]

I don't think that was what he was trying to say. It's not that you shouldn't empathize and console those who were wronged, but rather that it shouldn't be the ONLY thing allowed, where all you can do is console them and not tell them that leaving their valuables on the kitchen table wasn't the greatest idea.

If I put my things on my kitchen table, in my house, I would expect my valuables to be safe. Because it's my house. I keep my doors locked. I keep my windows locked. I don't have an alarm, but then, I'm in a safe neighbourhood, and you wouldn't expect to.

The point I'm making is, sure someone could come in and take my wedding ring off my table. They could also take my TV and computer and all my other valuables. People regularly break into banks, Target, hack into other accounts and steal information from them. Should I never use a credit card? Should I not leave my money in banks? Wasn't there a huge DDoS thing on the Escapist while I didn't have internet just a couple of weeks ago? Does that mean I shouldn't use the internet at all?

Everything comes with inherent risks. Using Amazon, Dominoes, they may not have been broken into yet, but they could be. That doesn't stop people giving vital information. Passwords get stolen every day, and yet we continue using them. We don't blame people for shopping at Target when you find out that people broke in and stole information. After all, we assume some stuff are just secure.

And we would assume our phones are just as secure, or our computers are secure. Or that we can trust our husbands/boyfriends/girlfriends/wives to be as secure with our private pictures like that. When they can't be, or when people break into our clouds, computers, hack our phones, or just put up stuff they find, it's a shock of a breach of trust. A trust that we had in our electronics, or someone we had faith in.

Sure we can say "they shouldn't have done it," in a self righteous way, but how many of us haven't ever done something stupid? I mean, not to quote the bible here (because I'm not one of those people,) but it's kind of apt, he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that. We've all done things we're not proud of that might have come back to bite us in the ass, and while we can judge them, the kind and human response would be to empathise with them and say "we've all been there in one way or another, I'm sorry you're in this situation."

Of course you shouldn't stop using credit cards. But you should be aware of the potential security risks in doing so and work to mitigate those risks. You should check your credit card statements for suspicious activities, you should report a stolen or lost card as soon as possible, Don't use your cards on questionable sites, always be on the look out for fraud.

In other words, you should not be cavalier about financial security. Don't take it on faith that nothing bad will happen. Be financially responsible.

Similarly, you should also not be cavalier about securing of sensitive information.

Lets put this into perspective. A lawyer representing the group of celebrities at large is attempting to sue google for damages of 100 million dollars. Which means that these celebrities made a collective bet of 100 million dollars on the security of iCloud.

Many people in this thread say that they believed the iCloud service was secure. Where the hell did they get that idea? Why in the world would you think iCloud is $100,000,000 secure? Why would you think it is even $10,000 secure? The iCloud service has a history of failed security. But even if iCloud was Fort Knox it wouldn't have worked out, the service was not hacked. The passwords of the celebrities were guessed, which means their passwords were less secure than the password on the ghost email address I use whenever I need to sign up for junk email.

What happened to these people sucks. But it so easily could have been avoided. These people failed in every way at securing their sensitive information. They failed to vet the storage solution, they failed to take advantage of available security features, they failed to practice even the most basic information security strategies. I see nothing wrong with saying "That really sucks. You should know that this was very easily preventable. This is what you should do to minimize the possibility of this happening to you again."

If you continued reading my responses, you would have eventually come to this:

I think the best way to avoid this is waiting a sufficient time from the "scandal", if you don't mind me calling it that, to talk about better procedures to avoid it happening again in the future.

To use an example from the OT, if your best friend came up to you and said they were pregnant and they were scared, because it was unplanned, you would usually wait a little while before bringing up the proper ways to not get pregnant in the future. Those first few weeks (or in this case days) would mostly be just showing empathy, helping quell the tides of idiots (and we know there will be idiots), and then when that has died down talking about future moves. This helps remove you from the mess of people that are just victim blaming, and helps the people that feel like victims (and in a lot of ways they are), know that you have their best interest in mind.

You can't just go into the mess and immediately start saying "Well here's what went wrong." It makes you look insensitive. It may not be what you're trying to do, but that's the way it comes across. You have to give someone a day or two to process. It's just the kind thing to do.

1 month 7 days. That is how long it has been since the leak. How long should we wait? 2 months? 3 months? A year?

You seem to want to twist my words into saying you can't talk about it now. When I was talking to the other person (I'm afraid I can't remember the avatar name, Kp....something), we were talking about being lumped in with people that was just victim blaming. Waiting a few days, maybe even a week, would be a good enough time.

It's fine to talk about now. But right as it happens is not a good idea. The best thing to do is to just empathise, show kindness, and then when some of the dust has settled, talk about everything civilly and what not. Today is fine, but since we're also speaking of "victim blaming" there is no reason not to talk about how to separate yourself from what victim blaming is and how to keep yourself away from it.

But if you want to just assume I'm going to take everything anyone says as victim blaming, you can go ahead and do that as well. I've already had a very well thought out and civil discussion with other people, and I think it was very enlightening about how we all could handle it better next time so that everyone can come out more informed and still treat the person in question with as much kindness and compassion as possible.

I am not trying to twist your words. Sorry if it comes off like that, but I am just responding to the words you highlighted for me to read. And, based solely on the words as you highlighted them for me, yes it sounds like you are saying we should still not be talking about it out of sensitivity. Or at least that is how I read it. Sorry I misunderstood you.