For all the collegiettes out there who use Snapchat or want to be in the know about the latest tech gossip, this is an important scoop about the latest tech scandal!
For those of you who don’t know the app Snapchat, it is a smart phone and iPad application that allows users to take photos or videos, add a filter or some text, and share them for one to ten seconds. After the time is up, poof! the image or video is supposedly erased from the server. So any risqué pics or the all time favorite ugly/silly face (a sign of true friendship), won’t be able to come back to haunt you. While there are some questions as to how true it is that the images/videos are erased, that isn’t the scandal we are talking about.
When signing up for the service, you create a username and add your phone number so friends can find you and add you to their friend list. This makes total sense for when you, the social collegiette, want to send all your friends a video of a group of you being silly. It is likely that your username for Snapchat is similar to or the same as your usernames for the other platforms you use (easy to remember and then your friends will know it is you). Unfortunately, Snapchat was recently hacked and some usernames and phone numbers have been leaked online. More specifically, 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers were leaked from Snapchat’s database over New Year’s.
According to Elite Daily contributor, Sean Levinson, SnapchatDB.info, an anonymous site that has now been shut down, revealed the leaked usernames and phone numbers of some Snapchat users. The hackers found the information through the “Find Friends” function in the application. This worked because the feature takes the user’s contacts and finds other Snapchat users within the same area. According to Rich McCormick, from TheVerge.com, the hackers thankfully blurred out the last two digits of the phone numbers to prevent abuse. The usernames are shown unedited, leaving those users open to massive spamming. To check if your information has been leaked you can check here.
The hackers maintain that they were doing a public service by exposing the security flaws for technology companies. SnapchatDB.info made a statement on the site while it was running that explained the hacker’s motives:
“Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the issue, and also put public pressure on Snapchat to get this exploit fixed. It is understandable that tech startups have limited resources but security and privacy should not be a secondary goal. Security matters as much as user experience does…Snapchat could have easily avoided that disclosure by replying to Gibsonsec’s private communications, yet they didn’t. Even long after that disclosure, Snapchat was reluctant to taking the necessary steps to secure user data…We wanted to minimize spam and abuse that may arise from this release. Our main goal is to raise public awareness on how reckless many internet companies are with user information. It is a secondary goal for them, and that should not be the case. You wouldn’t want to eat at a restaurant that spends millions on decoration, but barely anything on cleanliness.”
Snapchat failed to apologize for the leak, but assured customers that they were updating the security measures. The new “Find the Ghost” feature is Snapchat’s new authentication program to make sure you are a real person, much like captcha (the kind of distorted words that we used to make memes about last year) human verification:
But, Gibson Security (@gibsonec twitter handle) still sees flaws within the updates. Snapchat has yet to respond to the latest issues with it’s security and we can only hope that they are fixing the problems.
What this means for you: Be on the look out for any strange activity on your Snapchat account. If you think your information has been hacked you can delete your Snapchat account, which will only remove your username from the database and call your local telephone company and request a new number. You will probably have to detail the breach, but they will more likely than not give you a new number with little to no hassle. And as always, check your security settings on your different social media platforms! While technology is an exciting new tool for users to connect through, it is still so new that everyone is still trying to work out the different bugs to keep users safe!
For more information check out these links:
http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-hack-apology-2014-1
http://elitedaily.com/news/technology/snapchat-hack-real-4-6-million-usernames-numbers-published/
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/1/5262740/4-6-million-snapchat-phone-numbers-and-usernames-leaked