Zoe Quinn
As of Monday, October 13th, approximately 200,000 private photos and videos were leaked onto the underground chat forum 4chan from the popular picture-sharing app Snapchat.
A third-party app has been collecting every single photo and video file sent through it for years, giving hackers access to a 13GB library of snapchats. Users of 4chan have downloaded the files and have created a searchable database that can allow people to search the stolen images by Snapchat usernames.
First launched in 2011, Snapchat has over 100 million active users sending roughly 400 million “snaps” per day. Reportedly, fifty percent of these users are between the age of 13 and 17. Although Snapchat servers were never breached, the actual cause of the major leak was third-party apps, which enabled people to save photo and videos without the sender’s knowledge. This practice is expressly prohibited in Snapchat’s Terms of Use and they have worked at getting these apps deleted from stores.
Because of the leak, some users are concerned for their privacy.
“I always believed that after I sent a picture or video to someone, it disappeared forever after they opened it but now, I’m concerned for what is actually private and what is not,” shared junior Amy Ross.
The frowned-upon actions have users worried for their privacy.
“I feel like using other apps to secretly steal peoples pictures is a major invasion of privacy,” stated freshman Ashley Malone, “and it should be banned.”
Other users are even more hesitant about what they are sending.
“Knowing this, I’ll probably be more cautious of the things I send to other people,” said
Malone.
As of Monday, October 13th, approximately 200,000 private photos and videos were leaked onto the underground chat forum 4chan from the popular picture-sharing app Snapchat.
A third-party app has been collecting every single photo and video file sent through it for years, giving hackers access to a 13GB library of snapchats. Users of 4chan have downloaded the files and have created a searchable database that can allow people to search the stolen images by Snapchat usernames.
First launched in 2011, Snapchat has over 100 million active users sending roughly 400 million “snaps” per day. Reportedly, fifty percent of these users are between the age of 13 and 17. Although Snapchat servers were never breached, the actual cause of the major leak was third-party apps, which enabled people to save photo and videos without the sender’s knowledge. This practice is expressly prohibited in Snapchat’s Terms of Use and they have worked at getting these apps deleted from stores.
Because of the leak, some users are concerned for their privacy.
“I always believed that after I sent a picture or video to someone, it disappeared forever after they opened it but now, I’m concerned for what is actually private and what is not,” shared junior Amy Ross.
The frowned-upon actions have users worried for their privacy.
“I feel like using other apps to secretly steal peoples pictures is a major invasion of privacy,” stated freshman Ashley Malone, “and it should be banned.”
Other users are even more hesitant about what they are sending.
“Knowing this, I’ll probably be more cautious of the things I send to other people,” said
Malone.