Tag: leak

Snapchat has finally responded to arguably the biggest scandal of the holiday season: the leak of 4.6 million phone numbers and Snapchat user contact information. The white-hat hackers who exploited the lax security claimed that they were releasing the information in the hopes that Snapchat would, finally, fix the security exploit that has been a problem since August. In a somewhat embarrassing response to the original exploit, Snapchat responded publicly saying that, yes, user information was insecure. Evidently they did nothing to fix the problem, as several months later these hackers utilized that original method to hack into Snapchat’s user database. Now, Snapchat has responded saying that they’re releasing an update to the app that allows users to opt out of the Find Friends feature, the focus of the exploit. Is it too little too late, however? Will people trust their private data to Snapchat? As the backlash continues, it becomes more apparent that privacy is a tenuous issue, even for an app that is supposed to pride itself on the protection of its data.