Snapchat blames third-party clients for devastating photo leak

There’s been some furor today over the release of what appears to be tens of thousands of nude photos from Snapchat users on 4chan. The leaks seem to have started last night in an event that’s been called “The Snappening,” in reference to the major leak of celebrity nudes earlier this year.

Snapchat, however is firm on its stance that it had nothing to do with the leak. We received this statement from the company earlier:

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.

Basically, the leak was caused by users using third party clients to send their snaps, including some that were meant to allow users to save their their photos without other users knowing; an app called SnapSave (which isn’t available through official app stores) and a website called snapsaved.com (which no longer works) have both been referenced in various reports.

It serves as another reminder that the battle for privacy online has a long way to go, especially when using shady third party apps.

➤Hackers Access At Least 100,000 Snapchat Photos And Prepare To Leak Them, Including Underage Nude Pictures [Business Insider]