Emily Anderbery

The delivery of photos that last only for a few seconds and then disappear, is flawed. Over 100 thousand snapchat videos and pictures were hacked and posted on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2014. Snapchat blames the breach on third party applications.

The “Snappening” is what sources around the globe call the collection of videos and photos that were accumulated and leaked. In a statement. Snapchat said that its servers were never hacked and it was not the source of the attack.The leak came from unnamed third party apps that are prohibited by Snapchat.

News reports found that the pictures and videos came from a site call Snapsaved.com. In a news report Snapsave says they deleted the website and entire database associated with the breach.  

Despite the blame put on third party applications, Reuter’s experts said that Snapchat should have been able to detect multiple requests for information that originated from external servers (referring to third party website’s need for login information to Snapchat in order to capture photos), or to detect when users were alternately logging on from different apps.

The breach reminded media of the attack in January of 2014, when 4.6 million user’s names and phone numbers were downloaded and sold. Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of Veracode, says Snapchat’s encryption and security is very 

elementary and photos and videos are easy to access from the outside.

Computer security expert Graham Cluley posted in his blog that “many of Snapchat’s users have been lulled into a false sense of security, believing the marketing propaganda that suggests images will be safely erased forever within ten seconds.”

The question that arises from the breach is- “what is safe in social media?”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation states that information that is posted on any networking site is no longer
private, and anyone with the correct resources can easily access the information. In regards to social media, every post you make is published and is then owned by that website.