Wednesday, October 1, 2014

How do celebrities keep their cell numbers and personal emails so locked down?

Aliases. This is a big part of their lives. They use aliases whenever they travel or go to a restaurant. They usually stick with the same one, but some have three or four they use in rotation.

Account holders. A lot of celebrities, especially the wealthier ones, don't have many accounts in their actual names. Some things might be registered to a corporation or LLC. Some items might be addressed to lawyers, agents or accountants, depending on the situation.

Different contact information. Some celebrities have a work email or work cell, which they don't often use but they give out when they need to. This is typically handled on a day-to-day basis by an assistant, and is the most common way to get a hold of a celebrity. If you want to call them, you have to go through an assistant who will then forward you to a private line-- and you'll never know that number. They also might have personal email or cell that they only give to very select individuals-- truly close friends and family.

Premium accounts. A lot of services offer VIP accounts for celebrities. This helps give them preferential treatment and services that limit access from the general public.

All this requires a lot of juggling. And, yes, it gets compromised… all the time. That means abandoning old emails or cell phone numbers with great frequency. That means getting calls from strangers or fans in the middle of the night. That means losing important email in a flood of fan spam when you have to throw away an account over the weekend.

It means getting hacked and having your personal information stolen by a concerted effort or brute force attack. Having you privacy invaded, and your personal photos distributed across the internet. Then later getting blamed by the general online community because you didn't do enough to protect yourself.

Then trying to protect yourself, but realizing no matter what you do, someone-- maybe a fan, maybe some blackhat pervert, maybe a stalker with a very dark ulterior motive-- is actively trying to gain access to your life and will at some point succeed.

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