Tag: nudes

Fibbing on the internet is as easy as stealing candy from a baby. So, when a Kim Komando Show listener wrote to me and said he was a world-renowned fashion photographer, I raised an eyebrow. Then he asked me for advice on storing nudes safely, and both eyebrows shot up.

Thanks to the magic of simple computer forensics, I verified his identity. His IP address matches where he says he lives. He’s shot photos of some of the top models in the world. And he’s taking some … shall we say, private photos of his wife.

And he’s worried about some stranger getting their hands on those photos. His concern is well-founded: A few years ago, hackers leaked 400 naked pictures of celebrities.

Beyond that, he wondered if it was safe at all to upload nude photos to a cloud service. The answer? It is if you know what you’re doing.

It all comes down to encryption

When you’re storing sensitive photos, you need to take extra precautions. Saving the files on your phone or computer leaves them unsecured. Cloud-based storage is the way to protect your privacy — with a caveat.

Just make sure you’re avoiding public digital archives hackers can invade. I’m talking about Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox. They’re obvious targets, so you’ll have to manually set up encryption protection if you use those. This means no one can look at your photos without knowing the secret passcode.

The easiest way to do this is with a cloud service that automatically comes with a private encryption key. That means only you know how to unlock the content you store. It just so happens that our sponsor IDrive checks that box.

Encrypting your private photos is easier than you think

Using IDrive as an example, here’s how you would set up private key encryption:

1. When installing this cloud storage program onto your device, select Private Key Encryption.
2. Then, provide your encryption key. This will encrypt all the data on transmission and storage.
3. Upload your photos onto IDrive to ensure no one but you can see them. You’ll have to enter your private key to view these photos.

You can reset your encryption key settings, but that automatically deletes all the data from your account. It may sound intense, but it’s also reassuring. There’s no way a hacker can see the private photos you uploaded since they’ll disappear when the key changes.

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