(Image Source: WAWS)

BY ALEX OLGIN

Chris Chaney apologized Thursday for hacking into celebrity e-mail accounts and stealing personal information. The man arrested in the FBI’s “Operation Hackerazzi” said what started as curiosity turned into an addiction on Jacksonville’s WAWS.

“I deeply apologize. I know what I did was one of the worst invasions to privacy that someone could experience. And these people don’t have privacy to begin with and I was in that little sliver of privacy they do have.”

According to NBC, Chaney said he merely used the Internet to gather personal information about celebs and find out their email passwords. He would go through their contacts and find other celebrity e-mails.

Reporter: “The problem authorities say is that too many email users including celebrities use passwords like the names of pets or birth dates that are too easy to guess.”
“I hope this serves as a clear and important lesson for potential victims to protect their information and their computers.”

Once he was able to uncover nude photos of several celebrities - he then released them on the Internet. But a blogger from Popbytes thinks celebrities shouldn’t have nude photos of themselves if they don’t want them released.

“Yay, now celebs can go back to taking naked pics of themselves without fear of ‘em getting leaked onto the web!  Which is weird because honestly this probably could have been avoided if they had just deleted the pics instead of letting them take up space on their phones like complete morons.”

California Representative Mary Bono Mack says Congress needs be proactive with online privacy legislation. In an article by The Hill, Mack says they are still in the research phase.

“We’re thinking that at a very minimum,[the email provider] should let you know ‘we think you've been hacked, you should change your password’.”

According to CNN, Chaney could get up to 121 years in prison if he is convicted of the 26 counts of identity theft that he faces.  

Transcript by Newsy.