Last week users of the popular Snapchat service had thousands of pictures both clothed and unclothed stolen from their accounts and posted to the internet (dubbed The Snappening). Snapchat’s initial response, blaming users for using a third-party service, didn’t go over very well with some. While the wording of that statement probably could have been better, it turns out that Snapchat were 100% correct.
We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks. Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security. We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.
Snapsaved.com is the third-party app that was actually hacked due to a bad server configuration. Snapchat doesn’t approve of these third-party apps and asks users not to use them due to a high security risk and it seems it’s proved that to be true. Snapchat photos are designed to be viewed and then disappear from both the recipient and Snapchat servers. Many of the leaked photos were of minors as Snapchat has a large user base of 13-17 year olds.
In its Facebook post, Snapsaved said it “has always tried to fight child pornography” and said it has “even gone as far as to reporting some of our users to the Swedish and Norwegian authorities.”
“We tried to cleanse the database of inappropriate images as often as possible,” the post said.
It’s not clear who is behind Snapsaved. The website was down on Monday, and its Facebook post said it “immediately deleted the entire website and the database” after discovering the breach in its systems.
“I sincerely apologize on the behalf of snapsaved.com we never wished for this to happen,” the Facebook post said. “We did not wish to cause Snapchat or their users any harm, we only wished to provide a unique service.”
It appears this isn’t the first time Snapsaved.com has had issues, as they have been reported to the FTC for privacy reasons in the past. For now we hope this serves as a good reminder to everyone that care should be taken when using any service on the internet, and oh yeah…….stop sending nude pics of yourselves!
[button link=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/snapchat-hacked_n_5977334.html?utm_hp_ref=technology” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: The Huffington Post[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
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