Do you have a smartphone? You might be reading this blog post on it right now, or it might be sat next to you.  It might be locked with a passcode or only accessible via your thumb print or facial recognition.  Safe as houses.

Or is it?

On Sunday evening Twitter lit up as the hashtag #jenniferlawrencenudes flooded my timeline. With Twitter being at the forefront of breaking news (especially internet related news) the search term spread like wildfire and it was only a matter of minutes before pictures of JLaw minus clothing were RT’d into my feed.

It transpired that Jennifer wasn’t the only victim of yet another leaked nude photo scandal (the last big one was in 2012 with Mila Kunis and ScarJo falling victim). Nude pictures from the hacked iCloud accounts of celebrities started appearing on image sharing forum 4chan where users can post images and comments anonymously. Later on in the evening it was revealed that there were 101 celebrities who had fell victim to this same hacker with numerous private photographs being left compromised. Photographs that the “celebrity” considered to be safe in their iCloud account.

Searching the hashtag showed individual Twitter users personal opinions about the leaked photographs. The most common opinion? That she deserved it. That all the celebrities involved deserved that invasion of privacy because they’re celebrities.

She shouldn’t have taken the pictures in the first place if she didn’t want anybody to see them.

She should have been more careful with the photographs she had taken.

I think sometimes people forget that despite the money and fame, celebrities are essentially just like you and I – human beings made of flesh, bones, water, blood and human emotions. They aren’t robots and they’ve very much entitled to the same privacy that we are.

Show of hands (or comments) – have you ever taken a dirty picture? Be honest.

Come to think of it – what pictures do you have on your phone right now? Are there any that show you (or anybody else) sans le clothes or in a comprimising position?  I have.

Imagine you lost your phone and someone had no holds barred access to it – would you be more upset over the loss and expense of the handset or would you be more worried about the contents held on the handset? We’ve all shown someone  a picture from your phones photo gallery and given them the “don’t swipe left or right” eyebrows.

Imagine someone hacked your iCloud account and people were, god forbid, interested in seeing your private pictures of your boobs or tuppence. Imagine someone had complete access to the contents of your photo gallery AND THEN uploaded them to the internet for the world to see.  To think that by searching “Charl gingergirlsays nude photo” someone, somewhere could have access to a picture that I took for a trusted intended recipient would send me into hiding.

But using the mentality of Twitter users,  that would be my own fault.

If I were in the bath, star tuppence naked, and someone broke in through my front door and into my bathroom and found me with my Lush bath bomb foaming around my nether regions whilst I shaved my legs, would that that be my own fault too? Because essentially its the same invasion and violation of privacy.

Why does that make it any different for a celebrity? Just because they chose a career which involves being infront of the camera and being household names doesn’t mean they forfeit their privacy and deserve to make it onto a “101 leaked nudes” list.