social media reputation Archives - John Sileo, Cyber Security Training

Embarrassing hack has movie studio turning fifty shades of red

A hack doesn't always target your personal secrets or your bank account. If you're a celebrity, sometimes a rumor does enough damage on its own.

Ever since the naughty bestseller "Fifty Shades of Grey" arrived on the scene, the public has been wondering about the inevitable film adaptation. A recent announcement that former Harry Potter star Emma Watson would be the film's heroine must have come as a shock to many…including Watson herself. Because she hasn't actually been cast.

The news comes courtesy not of an official press release but a data security breach into German studio Constantin films that resulted in the leaking of documents, among them one confirming Watson's involvement. But the studio has denied that this is true, claiming that the compromised information is outdated.

Watson herself took to Twitter to address the incident, saying "Who here actually thinks I would do 50 Shades of Grey as a movie? Like really. For real. In real life." At least she's still got her social media reputation intact.

Jeep jacked and Burger King busted as company Twitter feeds get hacked

So far, 2013 has been the Year of the Hack, as the past few weeks have proven positively lousy with big-name security breaches.

Social networks, news outlets, and now…jeeps and fast food? That’s right, recent events have seen two prominent businesses get their Twitter accounts hacked, and worse. Not only did identity pirates shanghai the feeds (and therefore the reputations) of Burger King and Jeep, they used this illegal access to send embarrassing and scandalous messages to their followers.

Last Monday, @BurgerKing began tweeting that it had been sold to McDonalds, changing its image to a golden arches logo and posting ridiculous, wildly provocative comments about rappers and mad cow disease. The same thing happened to Jeep the next day, when its account claimed it had been sold to Cadillac and that its CEO had been fired for doing drugs.

Study: People remember your Facebook status updates more than books

Get this. A new study says that your Facebook status updates are more memorable to people today than carefully crafted lines from a book. If that’s not proof that social media exposure has real impact and an insanely long shelf-life, I don’t know what is.

A team of psychologists from the University of California published their research in the academic journal “Memory and Cognition.” They collected hundreds of Facebook posts from undergraduate research assistants and the same number of random phrases from recently published books sold on Amazon.

They made sure that the specific context was taken out so that the status updates and book excerpts stood completely on their own. Study participants were asked to memorize them. As it turns out, those Facebook statuses we throw up all willy-nilly stick with a person 1.5 times more than the words written by published authors.