What's the logic behind uploading compromising pics?

They say, a picture speaks a thousand words. And I agree. A picture or a photograph is taken primarily to relive those memories in the years to come. If you are visiting a well-known place, you take a picture. If you happen to visit a popular person, you take a picture. If there’s an occasion within family / social circles, you take lots of pictures. Then there are the professional lots – like wild-life photographers, news, media etc. It’s part of their profile to take pictures at the “opportune” moment, failing which their rivals will get more popularity and eye-balls. Then there are the amateur photographers – like me – who feel they are just one photo away from greatness! But we are a harmless lot and know what is appropriate and what is not. 

Off late, there have been a lot of security breaches on the cloud and lots and lots of personal pics have been hacked. It started with hacking of private cloud belonging to Apple which stored personal pics of celebrities. Among other pics, there were a lot of nude pics. If that didn’t teach us a lesson, news published a couple of days ago will shock regular users of a messaging application Snapchat. Snapchat differentiates itself from WhatsApp by deleting photos shared after a given timeline. This factor influenced users from across the globe to use Snapchat for purposes other than “social media”. Though most of the leaked pics from Snapchat were “harmless” in the sense that it contained low resolution selfies and showing off new stuffs, a small proportion of the leaked pics contained nude pics. 

So, what’s the deal with compromising pics? If we agree that we click for memories, I fail to understand what memory we are talking about in this situation. I am sure many will contradict me by saying it’s their smartphone, their body and they have all the right to do anything that’s not illegal or unlawful. I completely agree. My argument is with the sharing of the pics. I am not against users taking whatever pics they think they are comfortable with. One can take pics, delete it or keep it in your personal storage, but please don’t share / upload it. We are using a smartphone, lets at least live up to the smartphones expectation from a user (sic). 

My take on this is simple – use cloud or other sharing medium only to share pics that you feel will not compromise your integrity / social standing in the future. Private photos are supposed to remain just what it stands for – private. Hacking is an unfortunate event, but even in case of a hack your photos will remain harmless and don’t demean / degrade you in the society assuming you know what to upload and what to keep private. What we do with our smartphones / other devices are our own decision but once we decide to share / upload them, we are relying on external entities to protect you which will not always work. 

Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse. In other words, whenever technology comes up with a better security feature on the cloud, there are some who know how to breach it. Either they do it themselves (case in point: iCloud hack) or they exploit a loophole and inadvertently force users to do the needful (case in point: Snapchat hack).

Better safe than sorry. Use technology to your benefit and don’t simply delegate your responsibility of personal security to technology.