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Snapchat Says Users Were Victimized By Their Use of Third-Party Apps
Lucas123 writes: Reports that the servers of photo messaging site Snapchat were hacked are being denied by the company, which is now is saying its users were instead victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps. Hackers on 4chan have said broke into the site and they're preparing to release 200,000 photos or videos in their own database that will be searchable by Snapchatter name. According to one report, the third-party Snapchat client app enabled access for years to the data that was supposed have been deleted. The hackers have said they have a 13GB photo library. For its part, Snapchat in a statement reiterated its Terms of Use Policy, that "expressly prohibits" third-party app use "because they compromise our users' security."
Will someone please stop this anonymous mystery hacker? he's causing havoc all over the place.
Are they going to ban development systems and emulators? Pretty sure BlueStacks can take all the screenshots I want. How about cameras? Eyeballs? Is the analog hole closed yet?
Anyone who thought a Snapchat image was truly ephemeral was, at best, ignorant.
Boyfriend: "Wow, that's a great picture....but after the recent photo problem, are you sure you should be sending these kinds of pictures?"
Jennifer: "No, it's OK. I'm using this App called SnapChat and it deletes them automatically! They can't be saved or end up in the stupid cloud anymore."
No, it's like a bank telling you that it's not their fault when you make a check out to "cash" and someone other then who you intend cashes it.
Assuming snap chat is correct. In order to be a victim here one of two things needs to have happened:
1: You use a 3rd party client that leaked your photo - This is 100% your fault
2: You need to have sent a photo to someone using a 3rd party client which leaked your photo - Maybe you should have shown better judgement when sending out a photo if you were going to get upset about it being released.
While I suppose it's possible that that the reference to 'users' in 'their' is a different subset, the phrasing makes it seem that somebody who sent a picture was victimized by their own use of a third party app, while in reality all signs are pointing to the recipient of the photo using said app.
The recipients hopefully feel doubly-awful not just for betraying their friend's trust (not saving the image implied by the use of snapchat - technical feasibility and analog loopholes aside) in the first place, but for playing a pivotal role in those images possibly becoming public.
While I'm certainly in favor of educating people that when you send stuff to others, you have lost all control over it, no matter what assurances you get, I'm also in favor of educating people not to be jerks (be that the recipients, or the hackers).
I'm not sure if this has always been the case, or was added later, but for a very long time now, at least the Play Store's description has included:
So nobody should have been under the illusion that it was, in fact, impossible to save these images even if they lived a sheltered life and never imagined the analog loophole.