“We’ve removed tens of thousands of picture – within hours of the requests being made – and we have closed hundreds of accounts. The internet is used for many good things. Stealing people’s private photos is not one of them.”
The Hollywood lawyer Marty Singer, acting on behalf of his unnamed clients, sent a letter to Google execs Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, accusing the company of “blatantly unethical behavior” that has made their company “millions from the victimization of women.” Singer threatened to sue Google for $100,000,000 if the images were not removed immediately.
“Google knows that the Images are hacked stolen property, private and confidential photos and videos unlawfully obtained and posted by pervert predators who are violating the victims’ privacy rights and basic human decency by stealing and displaying confidential private photos and videos (most of which depict the women in private settings, while nude or semi-nude, engaging in private intimate conduct) without the permission of the owners of the Images,” said the letter. “Yet Google has taken little or no action to stop these outrageous violations, or to limit the Images from appearing in Google search results.” wrote Marty Singer
The saga begun this summer, In august a first massive leak was announced online and the pictures were everywhere on the web. The list of victims is very long and includes many celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Vanessa Hudgens, the US national women’s soccer team player Hope Solo, Mary-Kate Olsen, Avril Lavigne, Hayden Panettiere, Lake Bell, Leelee Sobieski and former Disney stars Aly and AJ Michalka.
The emails, obtained earlier this month by the Daily Dot and reviewed by multiple security experts, show Ibrahim Balic, a London-based software developer, informing Apple of a method he’d discovered for infiltrating iCloudaccounts. ” states a blog post published by the Daily Dot on the Fappening case.
“In a March 26 email, Balic tells an Apple official that he’s successfully bypassed a security feature designed to prevent “brute-force” attacks—a method used by hackers to crack passwords by exhaustively trying thousands of key combinations.” continues the post.
The reply from Apple is anyway questionable, below the image reported in the article.
Resuming, Apple was alerted in March on the security issue …. but now we are reading of The Fappening 4, whatever the source would be it is likely that other photos will be released in the next weeks.
(Security Affairs – Fappening 4, celebrity nude photos leak)