14 DAY TRIAL // A new set of celebrity photos were leaked yesterday and among them was singer Hilary Duff. After taking a good look at the incriminating material, the singer not only decided that the photos of her were fake, but she also called the FBI to get to the bottom of this.
She told authorities that she was the target of a fake photo leak and that the person in the so-called intimate photos was not her. The news is confirmed by NY Daily News which spoke with her representative.
The photos in question are said to show a woman's body from the neck down, conveniently leaving out the face. What the hacker forgot was that Duff poses a set of birthmarks and tattoos on her body, which the woman in the photo did not have. For this reason, the photos were quickly dismissed as being fake.
Duff's representative has confirmed that “the FBI has been alerted that these photos are fake.” Also, Duff's legal camp is issuing a warning to anyone who states the contrary, claiming that they will suffer “legal recourse.”
The only reason the photos that were clearly not Hilary Duff passed off as real was because just days ago there was the most massive celebrity photo leak in history and several A-name celebrities were involved in the publishing of their intimate photos.
Names like Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Victoria Justice, McKayla Maroney and Ariana Grande were all affected in the leak, and have since all contacted the FBI, trying to get to the source of the leak. So far, no real progress has been made, although the Bureau thinks that the hacker was able to obtain his victim's credentials by using a phishing scam.
At first, several celebs, such as Victoria Justice, McKayla Maroney and Ariana Grande claimed that the photos of them were nothing but fakes, but after they were blasted by fans for lying, they eventually came clean and admitted that it was really them in the intimate and often unflattering shots.
The scandal raised a little more than just eyebrows, because not only has online security of private material come under scrutiny again, but it has also raised moral issues about invading a person's privacy, particularly if the person in question was famous.
The gossip media has failed the test because some celeb sites immediately resorted to publishing them, a move that was deemed as in poor taste by the readers, only to take them down later and apologize. Most of them condemned the act of leaking the photos, but still reported on the matter.