3rd party SnapChat apps blamed for “The Snappening”

Hackers on notorious forum 4chan have over the last 24 hours threatened to release hundreds of thousands of private pictures sent via Snapchat.

Snapchat has confirmed that the pictures have not been hacked from their service, but were instead leached over the period of months by unauthorized 3rd party Snapchat app Snapsaved, which  not only lived up to their name by saving Snapchat pictures, but who’s security it seems was not up to scratch to protect the trove.

Several hundred images has already been leaked, with 13 GB of pictures possibly set to hit the internet soon.

The leak has drawn attention to 3rd party apps, with Snapchat commenting:

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.

Fortunately it seems Windows Phone, which does not have an official Snapchat app, continues to fly below the radar of the company, but this could obviously change.

Has the news made our readers more nervous about using Snapchat on Windows Phone? Let us know below.

Via Businessinsider.com