Love them or hate them the Kardashians are big business. Earlier this week it was reported that a flaw in the sister’s respective websites could expose users names and email addresses.
Fans of the Kardashians are no doubt already aware but for the uninitiated their websites and apps offer a premium view into the sister’s lives, with exclusive pictures and content.
Offering a premium app or website experience is an easy way to cash in on their widespread exposure and as illustrated by the 600k users found on just one of their websites it’s obviously a successful one.
However, as we internet denizens know making a website that is 100% leak free and completely secure is virtually impossible.
80 million followers
Mark James, ESET IT security specialist, believes that the speed at which the websites were put together is a factor and also that individuals in the public eye will inevitably fall under the microscope of bug hunters.
“This is what can happen when you take a massive potential money making scenario and apply an urgency to get it off the ground without thoroughly looking into the security aspect of how you’re going to protect all the vulnerable peoples data you are going to collect.
“The Kardashians have a massive following, Kim alone is the most popular person on Instagram with over 44 million followers, their combined Twitter accounts (Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Kylie) have over 80 million followers so there’s no reason to think that anything they put their name too is not going to attract a lot of attention.
“Now I fully understand when I say “them” I don’t actually mean the Kardashian ladies themselves, of course they will not be involved in the mundane business of creating websites and making sure its secure but they must be somewhat accountable.
“They receive the monetary benefits so they should be involved in making sure that the right people look after it and as much money that’s needed is ploughed into making it secure.
“We will see more and more celebrities utilising this avenue for exposure and with that comes the risk of more people trying to get access to that data, some may not make it public until after they have used and abused it.”
As Mark points out it’s difficult to blame the Kardashians directly as it’s unlikely they coded the websites themselves.
However, as the websites serve to further their reach and crucially their cash flow, ultimately the buck stops with them.
Did you sign up to one of the Kardashian’s websites? Were you notified by them?
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