This post has been modified to reflect new information since its original publication.
You wake up in the morning in an all-white room bedroom.
Diamond rings and other fancy jewelry litter the top of your dresser.
When you finally roll out of bed, your feet sink into a plush $10,000 carpet. Walking on a cloud to the bathroom, you stop to speak into the intercom and ask for a caramel macchiato.
As you tread across the heated floors and look in the mirror, you realize life’s good.
But then the phone rings and a frantic voice tells you to go to Twitter. After a few swipes looking for the app, you can’t believe what you find.
There are many upsides to fame.
But one of the downsides, as we all know, is that it becomes much harder to maintain a private life once you become famous.
Yet privacy is often key to maintaining a strong reputation, both on and off the internet. So, how do celebrities keep their privacy, and what can we learn from their experiences?
This article will delve into the definition of celebrity and explore the implications and impact that their fame has on their privacy.
Definition of celebrity
Celebrity, a term that has become deeply ingrained in modern culture, refers to individuals who have attained a significant degree of fame and recognition in various fields.
The concept of celebrity typically encompasses individuals from the realms of entertainment, sports, politics, and even social media, although the idea has evolved over time.
With the advent of technology and the widespread availability of media platforms, the idea of being a celebrity has taken on new dimensions. And as the public’s fascination with the lives and achievements of these individuals continues to grow, their rights to privacy seem to keep shrinking.
Did you know there’s a hackers’ celebrity hot list?
That’s right, McAfee the computer software giant, has a list of celebrities they talk about every year who have been exposed publicly in some way.
These celebrities end up in legal battles, and it makes for good reading or TV when photos of celebrities become public eye candy.
The top five celebs include some heavy hitters:
- Ryan Gosling
- Emily Blunt
- Jennifer Lopez
- Zendaya
- Kevin Costner
What’s the main point here?
The point is these people have the best security in the world, and their individual privacy still gets hacked.
This is why it’s so important to have a plan to protect your privacy and identity.
In the end, these people have more than enough money to fix their public image, so it can take a hit and survive.
People will laugh, make jokes, and then they’re off to make more movies and millions, swiping their credit card like nothing ever happened.
But regular, everyday people don’t have it so easy. What about the rest of us mere mortals?
Privacy starts with prevention
When we read about celebrity hacks, privacy rights, and other privacy invasions, the common ingredient in many of these stories is the breach of an individual’s online account—for example, a compromised cloud service, a hacked email address, and so on.
These kinds of attacks on public figures or celebrities are often preventable and are facilitated by weak passwords or easily guessed credentials.
For this reason, celebrities need to be extra careful to follow online privacy best practices.
However, the same privacy advice applies to all of us. While the photos stolen from your accounts may not go viral, they can still have significant negative effects on your life.
Choose strong passwords
Celebrities now have phones, email accounts, and social media accounts—all of which may contain private information that hackers looking for dirt to sell to the tabloids or to disseminate via “troll” messages on a widely viewed account can target.
Part of protecting your privacy and your online reputation is choosing strong passwords. When creating or changing a password, you should avoid using pet names, names of family members, birthdays, and other personal information others could use to find out more about you or guess your passwords.
Choose something opposite to your personality and use a combination of uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols to confuse password crackers.
Even better, use a password manager tool so you can have strong, randomly generated passwords for all your accounts without having to remember them all.
Stop people-search companies in their tracks
People-search companies scrape the internet for information about everyone and compile what they find into detailed profiles, available for free or at low cost to anyone. These kinds of profiles are invaluable for people trying to hack into your accounts because they provide the answers to common security questions.
For celebrities, they also create threats from paparazzi or stalkers, since it becomes trivially easy to find where the celebrities live.
Fortunately, it is possible to opt out of the vast majority of people-search sites. For more detailed information about this topic, see some of our articles on the removal process.
Be careful what apps you download
In some cases, celebrities have gotten hacked through security vulnerabilities in common apps. While apps on your smartphone can be fun and useful, some of them can also be a nightmare for your privacy.
This goes for children of celebrities too. We all know they are on their phones, distracted, and can easily bypass and agree to security permissions they should be reading.
Carefully check which permissions the app wants, especially if it is asking for access to your contacts, social media accounts, or location data. Also, look closely at reviews and criticisms of apps. Some apps will “phone home” with your information without informing you.
Most often, the issue is not that the maker of the app is trying to violate your privacy, but rather that the app collects more information than it needs and is sloppy with its storage. After that, an ingenious hacker simply finds a way to break into the app’s database and access your data.
Practice information-sharing discipline
One of the best ways to keep your information private is to not give it out.
It’s common for celebrities to have a set of contact information that is filtered by assistants, agents, and managers.
This helps to put a layer of privacy between them and people trying to find out where they live, such as paparazzi or overly dedicated fans. And we know all too well about the devastation the intrusion of paparazzi or a crazed fan can cause.
It also decreases the likelihood of harmful gossip and other online reputation management problems, and it can keep you physically safe from strangers who might seek you out in person.
For non-celebrities, the practical version of this advice would be to avoid putting personal information on your social media profiles. Avoid listing your phone number or address on Facebook, for example.
Jennifer Lawrence’s experiences with privacy protection
Jennifer Lawrence, the renowned American actress, has undoubtedly made a remarkable impact on the entertainment industry with her exceptional talent and charm.
Alongside her impressive career, Lawrence has also been at the forefront of discussions surrounding privacy protection.
Despite her efforts to maintain a level of privacy, Lawrence’s experiences have shed light on the complex dynamics between fame and the right to privacy in the private lives of public figures and celebrities.
As a high-profile celebrity, she has faced challenges when it comes to safeguarding her personal life from the prying eyes of the media and the public.
Dealing with photos taken without permission
One of the most vexing celebrity privacy problems stems from photos taken without their consent.
When it comes to photos, privacy laws vary from place to place, but in the United States, there is generally no protection against photos taken in public places.
There are laws against trespassing for the purposes of taking photographs, yet even in those cases, it is not usually illegal to distribute the photos even if the taking of them was itself illegal.
For celebrities, the best solution to this problem is to be very guarded in one’s personal life, avoid compromising situations where unwanted photography is possible, and generally keep out of the public eye to the extent that doing so is practical.
For everyone else, these kinds of precautions would be overkill and counterproductive.
However, if you do find yourself facing the spread of unlicensed photos, there are steps you can take to resolve the issue.
Depending on the nature of the photos, you may have certain rights over them. Even if you don’t, there are things you can do to decrease their prevalence online and minimize their impact. For specific advice on your situation, feel free to give us a call.
If you don’t know what the internet is displaying about you and how other people see you, then you’re going to want to grab your free reputation report card now. This report instantly tells you how others see you online and even grades your online reputation.
Because choosing not to know when you can find out for free, is just, well… you can fill in the blanks.
This post was contributed by Rockey Simmons, founder of SaaS Marketing Growth.