Snapchat Hackers Post Explicit Images Online
Explicit images taken by people and shared on the photo messaging app have been intercepted and posted online, reports say.
Saturday 11 October 2014 03:26, UK
Explicit images taken with the photo sharing app Snapchat have reportedly been intercepted via a third party app and leaked online.
Users of the app, many of them teenagers, have apparently had their photos gathered over a number of years before being posted on a website.
The leak - dubbed the 'Snappening' - comes after the iCloud security breach in which nude photos of stars including Jennifer Lawrence and recently former Dr Who Matt Smith were published online.
San Francisco-based Snapchat said it was not the source of the latest leak and that it strictly prohibits use of third party apps, which are created by separate developers as "add-ons".
"We can confirm that Snapchat's servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks," a spokeswoman said.
"Snapchatters were allegedly victimised 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."
Snapchat allows users to share videos and images that "disappear" after up to 10 seconds. However, recipients can "screen-grab" and save the pictures if they wish.
The app came under fire earlier this year after hackers published 4.6 million Snapchat user names and phone numbers on a website.
Police and children's charities have previously warned teenagers about the dangers of using the app to send intimate photos.
In last month's so-called 'Fappening' scandal a hacker posted hundreds of naked images of celebrities on the online community 4Chan.
Jennifer Lawrence, one of the most high-profile victims, told Vanity Fair: "It's not a scandal. It is a sex crime."
Other victims include Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, actress Winona Ryder and Matt Smith's ex-girlfriend Daisy Lowe.