Gabrielle Union writes magazine essay on hacking scandal

Gabrielle Union has written an essay on the Hollywood hacking scandal for a magazine, describing her horror when she was included on the list of targeted celebrities just a day after her wedding.

The actress found out her intimate personal pictures had been stolen from her cloud storage account shortly after she married sports star Dwyane Wade in August (14).

In the article for America's Cosmopolitan magazine, Union reveals the stress of the scandal ruined her honeymoon, writing, "A day after I got married this past August, rumors spread on the Internet that my name was on a list of more than 100 women whose private photos had been stolen off Apple's iCloud. I had been so happy that week, thinking about my wedding and honeymoon... But suddenly, I felt paralyzed... The site (4Chan, which published the shots) said more photos were to come, including mine... It felt like The Hunger Games: You're waiting to be attacked... My honeymoon was plagued by thoughts of when I would get hit. It was always in the back of my mind: Will today be the day my life gets ruined?... The hit came three weeks later. I was on the final night of a beach retreat... A photo of me had surfaced online."

Union goes on to brand the hacking a "hate crime against women" and a "new form of sexual abuse", and reveals the scandal has cost her a huge amount of money in legal fees as she fought to have her nude snaps removed from the web.

She adds, "My lawyers started sending 'cease and desist' letters to sites that were running the stolen photos. Legal bills began rolling in. Every time the lawyers managed to remove photos from one site, the shots popped up on another... It's an insane battle."

Union concludes by urging women to change their passwords regularly, and make them "complex" and "varied".

Scarlett Johansson, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Winona Ryder and Vanessa Hudgens are also among the famous females who were targeted by the hackers, and agents at America's Federal Bureau of Investigation subsequently launched a probe.