Remember in 2014 when a number of celebrities including Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton had their iCloud accounts hacked and nude images of them were leaked and consequently shared by thousands of people online?
Well, one Pennsylvanian man has pled guilty to his part in this gross invasion of privacy that occurred over a year ago.
International Business Times reports that Ryan Collins, a 36-year-old has signed a plea which will see him serve just 18 months jail time.
He has pled guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information.
Collins accessed 50 iCloud and 72 Gmail accounts over almost two years between September 2012 and 2014, when the private photographs were then leaked online, spreading on 4Chan and Reddit.
The scary thing about this is that Collins did not have to directly hack into the accounts themselves, but accessed the photos by 'phishing'. He sent hundreds of emails to the accounts of the celebrities posing as an Apple or Google worker, and the information he received enabled him to access their private accounts.
Although there is no evidence that Collins shared or uploaded the photos, this breach of privacy by the 36-year-old kick-started a horrible experience for the individuals involved.
