Photo Books Stop Hackers

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Mark Mizen

Hackers exploited the [Apple] system to gain full control of Wired journalist Mat Honan’s iCloud account and wipe his iPhone, iPad, and Mac, including precious photographs of his young daughter that he had not backed up.

Christopher Williams, The Telegraph, August 8, 2012

Well, actually photo books don’t stop hackers. Photo books do, however, prevent the loss of photos that are stored on the computer, because as far as I know, no one has figured out how to steal a real book along with the data on a computer. The complete details of how hackers used Amazon and Apple to delete Mat’s files are available at How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking and Apple and Amazon Review Security After Hack.

So, someone, please encourage Mat Honan to create a photo book with his precious photographs of his young daughter.

About Mark Mizen

I have over twenty years professional experience in all aspects of photography and digital imaging. I am Chair of the ISO WG5 TG2 committee responsible for physical properties and durability of imaging material and am currently with HID Global working on systems for security printing for IDs, licenses, and credit cards. Previously, I was Director of Digital Development at Creative Memories from 2009 to 2012 and was responsible for the Creative Memories digital products and services. I also established and directed the Creative Memories Technology Center, which evaluated new products prior to product introduction, assisted with production difficulties, and provided technical information to support product sales.

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This entry was posted in Backup, Digital Photos, Photo Books and tagged Amazon, Apple, Mat Honan, Wired Magazine. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Photo Books Stop Hackers

Minnesota Transplant says:

August 17, 2012 at 5:14 pm

Matt’s story prompted me to strengthen all my passwords — so scary! But you make a good point. Print! Print! Print!

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Viovio (@viovio) says:

August 22, 2012 at 9:10 am

We couldn’t agree more. Print, Print, Print! 😉 In fact if he had printed his book with us, much of his digital photos would have been recoverable as we would have the print ready PDF from his order. FYI, there are several clever tools that will extract all the images from a PDF if you are desperate.

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