Just weeks after Apple’s iCloud was hacked, and hundreds of celebrities’ nude photos were leaked, a similar hacking has occurred with Snapchat.
Used predominantly by teenagers aged 13 to 17, Snapchat is a messaging service that lets users send pictures and videos that are supposed to disappear after a few seconds. However, with the recent hacking, it appears that images actually don’t disappear.
According to DailyMail a user named “4chan” is responsible for the hacking, and posted the photos over the weekend in an event dubbed ‘The Snappening.” 4chan is also said to have orchestrated the iCloud hacking.
A large number of the photos/videos are said to contain nude images of underage teenagers, which Snapchat users are mostly comprised of . As a result the images have been classified as child pornography.
Reports state that for years, a third party Snapchat client app has been storing every image/video sent on the messaging service, giving hackers access to a 13GB private library.
Snapchat has denied responsibility for the hacking.
‘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.”
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