The Fappening

On August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of many celebrities, mostly women, and with many having their nudes, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and later shared by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit. 

The images were initially believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite iCloud. However, access was later revealed to have been gained via targeted phishing attacks.

The event, which media outlets and Internet users referred to under names such as "The Fappening".) and "Celebgate", was met with a varied reaction from the media and fellow celebrities. Some argued that the name “The Fappening” was incredibly offensive because it makes light of stolen privacy. However, the name was still used by the mainstream media then and is still used years later when referenced.  

Many criticized the Apple Inc. company for not having a secure privacy server.

On September 20, 2014, a second batch of similar private photos of additional celebrities was leaked by hackers. On September 26, a third batch was also leaked, which was dubbed as "The Fappening 3".

References

Category:August 2014 events
Category:Apple Inc.
Category:Nudity
Category:September 2014 events