There was an uproar today after tens of thousands of nude photos of Snapchat on 4chan. The leaks began last night at an event called “Snappening,” which referred to the well-known leak of nude celebrity photos.
Snapchat, however, says its systems were not breached.
“We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never compromised and were not the source of these leaks. Snapchatters were victimized by using third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice we explicitly prohibit in our Terms of Service because it puts our users’ security at risk. We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have been able to remove several.”
As Business Insider reports, the leak was caused by users using third-party apps to send and receive photos. But there are some that allow users to save their photos without the senders knowing. An app called SnapSave (which is not available through official app stores) and a website called snapsaved.com (which is no longer in operation) were two of these “third-party apps.”
Another reminder of how far the battle to protect our online privacy has to go, especially when using insecure third-party apps.
