Apple Customers Get Hacked

For more than a few decades, certainly since Steve Jobs’ second coming to Apple in the late 1990s, and the spread of the internet across planet earth, we’ve heard that Macs are safer than Windows.

I say it doesn’t matter. Thanks to the internet, even Apple’s billion or so customers are going to get hacked. While it’s true that hackers may have a more difficult time getting into a Mac or iPhone than other platforms, much of what hackers want does not reside on our home-bound, office-bound or handheld devices.

What hackers want is online. Sooner or later, Apple’s customers– just like everyone else– will get hacked. I’ve been hacked. Or, rather, information about me has been stolen by hackers at least half a dozen times in recent years, all thanks to my Mac and iPhone being less valuable than the personal information I store online.

Online? No, not even iCloud is important. Looking through the list of largest corporate hacks– those we know about– I’m on three of the Top 5 worst. Yahoo!, Marriott Starwood, and Equifax.

Wait. There’s more. I’m on other lists of huge hacker hauls, too.

• Target – 110-million
• Adobe – 38-million
• Sony 77-million
• Home Depot – 56-million
• eBay – 145-million
• JP Morgan Chase – 76-million

I suspect that’s just the tip of the iceberg. A few of my credit card companies have volunteered information about a breach and sent me new credit cards and asked me to change my login ID’s password.

How much personal information was stolen on such hacks? Nobody knows. Such hacks have a ripple effect which required going back through other accounts and changing those passwords, too.

Yes, Apple customers get hacked, but not necessarily through a hacker attack on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Other than 1Password, where I keep all my online account usernames and passwords, there isn’t much that’s valuable on my Mac or iPhone, so why would a hacker bother? I mean, other than 1Password.

Malware exists on the Mac, yes, and is prevalent among Windows PC users and the less tech savvy among humanity, and it isn’t as if Apple doesn’t help keep hackers at bay and malware to a minimum. You may have received a few of those email spam malware messages that have cropped up in recent months that demand payment because your account and device has been hacked. Those are easy to dismiss.

What isn’t easy to dismiss is the trend. More hacks. More breaches. More need to update passwords (and keep them distinctly different between accounts), because of ever more online breaches that have little to do with Apple, the Mac, iOS, or even Windows.

Apple customers get hacked. We just don’t always get hacked on our Macs or iPhones.