We’ve all heard of the horrible incidents regarding private stuff that people have posted on their personal web pages going public and causing a lot of problems. Celebrities are on top of the list for their innocence becomes prime breeding ground for those who seek an easy buck in exchange for stuff regarding them(personal pictures and videos and other stuff). Truth of the matter is that there is no privacy on the internet or on any computer that is connected to it.
Yes, this is true for the internet is just a network of computers that are connected in to one big computer network. May it be a Corporate server, a personal computer or the personal digital assistant and many others, all of them are susceptible to attack and therefore vulnerable. This has become so much a problem that companies have developed specialized software programs called firewalls that prevent unauthorized users from accessing the information contained within a computer system. But these systems have failed in the past quite disastrously like the incident only a few years back with internet search engines suffering from huge glitches due to malware being able to overload their systems causing them to slow down or even crash in some instances.
So how do we really protect pictures and other relevant or sensitive information from prying eyes and ears? For personal stuff, keep it off the web by storing it somewhere safe say a portable digital storage device like a pen drive, CD, dvd or some other media you can take out of your computer when you don’t use it. Use the encryption systems that are most likely to be included on your computer’s operating system. And lastly, learn about how firewalls work and configure them properly(too many users leave their systems vulnerable due to using the default settings on their OS’s).