On Aug 31, 2014 nearly two hundred nude photos of female celebrities were posted online on different image sharing sites. Some of the celebrities whose nude photos were leaked online include Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Araina Grande, Yvonne Strahovski, and McKayla Maroney.

It has been known that the anonymous hacker or people who gained access to the private photos of the celebrities had hacked into iCloud accounts of the victims. Now, celebrities, media and the tech world are blaming Apple for not offering brute force protection. However, one needs to be aware of the fact that using weak passwords and not using two-step authentication feature can be the major reasons which allowed hackers to gain access to private photos.

If the hackers were able to access private photos of celebrities stored by hacking iCloud, hackers may have also hacked their other sensitive information like contacts, banking or credit details, login credentials, etc, stored on the iCloud.

In simpler terms, photos and files stored on iCloud are nothing but storing them on Apple servers. If you are not using the available security features, hackers will be able to access your sensitive data stored on iCloud anytime without your consent.

What You Should do to Protect Photos and Files Stored on iCloud

All the snapped photos that are stored on your iDevice can be viewed by accessing the Camera Roll. Apple has a cool feature that allows you to store all your photos on Apple iCloud servers. This makes it possible to sync all the images between devices. In other words, if you snap a photo using your iPhone, the same can be viewed on other devices such as Mac and iPad.

It is a handy feature for automatically backing up your photos in case you happen to lose them from your iPhone. Since the photos are stored on Apple servers, you can access the photos online too or on your PC by accessing your iCloud account. If you are using easy to predict passwords or not using two-factor authentication for iCloud, all the data stored on iCloud can be easily stolen.

Disable My Photo Stream

If you do not want your photos to be stored on Apple Servers, you can simply disable the My Photo Stream feature. To do this, you need to access Settings on your iPhone and then tap on 'iCloud' and then again tap on 'Photos' or 'Photo Stream' and then turn off the My Photo Stream. Disabling this feature will stop your iDevice from sending your photos to iCloud. If you own other iDevices, you should disable the My Photo Stream feature on those devices too.

Prevent Specific Photos From Showing on iCloud

If you do not want to disable the Photo Stream feature but would like to prevent certain photos from showing on the iCloud, you can specifically select the photos and delete from the Photo Stream. By doing this, the deleted photos won't show up on any of your devices. However, they will be still there on the device you shot the photos. You can access them through the Camera Roll and delete them from there if you do not want the photos to remain on your device.

Do Not Use Weak Passwords

Accessing sensitive information from iCloud is all about cracking the login credentials of the account. Hence, your password should be very strong which should include a combination of lowercase and uppercase alphabets and numbers. Never use a password that can be cracked easily. Do not use birthday, names of your parents, mobile phone number or other such easy to guess passwords. It is recommended to use a longer password since they cannot be hacked easily.

Apple's Two-Step Authentication

All major companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple are offering two-step authentication. It is a very good way to safeguard your data on iCloud. It is a double lock feature to secure your iCloud account.

When you activate this feature and try to access your iCloud account by entering a username and password, Apple will send a text message containing a unique code for your handset or other device chosen by you. Hence, apart from your password, you will also have to enter the unique code to access your account. If you use this two-factor authentication feature, it will become next to impossible for hackers to hack into your account.