A Third-Party App May Have Leaked Tens Of Thousands Of Snapchat Photos

A Third-Party App May Have Leaked Tens Of Thousands Of Snapchat Photos

Someone is trying to make “The Snappening” happen. Named after the recent nude celebrity leak, rumours are circulating that hackers have gained access to stolen Snapchat photos and plan to match the sexually explicit ones up with usernames and release them in a torrent on October 12.

According to Business Insider, the hackers gained access to a 13GB library of snaps from a third-party app that people use to save Snapchat photos without the sender knowing.

Snapchat acknowledged the leaks but abdicated responsibility, pushing blame on the victims.

“We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks. Snapchatters were victimised 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,” a Snapchat spokesperson told Gizmodo.

Snapchat may monitor the App Store vigilantly now, but if this leak is for real, they still allowed a shitload of user photos to get collected surreptitiously before getting the right illegal app removed.

But that’s a big if. Snapchat might not have anything to apologise for at all this time around (besides giving potentially violated users some COLD ARSE treatment).

We have no confirmation that the photos posted were stolen from a third-party Snapchat client. There’s not even a consensus on which third-party site got hacked (Snap Save? Snap Saved? No one has been able to make contact either way, including me.)

This could be a dupe to implicate 4Chan, like when a group of hoaxers made it look like 4Chan was threatening to leak nude photographs of Emma Watson. One of the first blogs to publicize this story is run by Kenny Withers, a social media marketer who posted some of the allegedly leaked photos. Some people are arguing that the supposedly leaked photos are pictures that have been online for a long time and are not from Snapchat at all.

Here is a 4Chan thread reposted from Kenny Withers’ blog discussing them…but a 4Chan thread is not exactly the most reliable source:

A Third-Party App May Have Leaked Tens Of Thousands Of Snapchat Photos

If the leak is real, though, there is likely an ample amount of child pornography there (Snapchat’s userbase skews heavily underage). And it is a huge deal, and the hackers should go to jail. However, right now there’s no proof that these photos actually came from a hack. They could easily be photos from elsewhere online.

Whether or not this is real or bullshit, it’s a good reminder that Snapchat has a pretty shitty record at keeping user info secure and it is not the ideal platform for sending or receiving sexually explicit pictures.

We’re actively looking for hard evidence that the leak occurred (or that it didn’t) and will update as we find out more. [Business Insider]

Picture: Getty


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.