This weekend the world was shocked when the naked truth of female celebrities’ sex lives leaked onto the internet. Through one of the biggest hackings in celeb history Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Ariana Grande and many other starlets’ personal naked photos ended up in the hands of the general public.This was definitely major tragedy that could have been avoided.

Am I advocating for the end of nude selfies…? Nah. Sure that doesn’t fit in with my prude tastes, but to each his own. If you enjoy being in your birthday suit and being photographed or videotaped, do you! I mean some people have made a pretty good living off it, but since you are going to college and will probably have an office job instead of gracing the latest episode of E! News, those scandalous images are most likely not in your best interest.

So here are some ways to protect yourself as you dive into the wonderful world of sexting:

1. You could at least not have your whole face, recognizable tattoos and birthmarks in it. Don’t just blur out or pixelate your face, don’t not have it in there at all. Do you know how easy it is to remove that and revert your image back to it’s original form? Do better.

2. Do not upload your nudes to any social networking site, iCloud or the worldwide web! What are you doing? The internet is not your friend! It is that one girl you kind of get along with ,but in the event that you get in trouble, sells you out.

3. Be careful who you send them to. Yes, we all want to believe that when provocative photos are sent to that certain someone they won’t share them, but it’s happened to plenty of people. So make sure there is a culture of respect between you and the person that will be viewing them and at all cost DO NOT send nudes to randoms. Don’t send nudes to strangers. Don’t put nudes on uMentioned.

4. Finally, you know what’s better than sending nudes? Actually being naked in front of your significant other. Not only do you get a bigger reaction than a sext brings, but you don’t have to explain to future kids why daddy is in a thong on google images.