We’ve all enjoyed the odd Snapchat here and there. The coolest part, of course, is its focus on sending vanishing photos. It’s a popular multi-platform mobile photo messaging app that allows us to send self-destructing, or ‘ugly’ photos, which vanish within a few seconds of being viewed. The app has become popular in the adult world as an app used for ‘sexting’, which of course as raised concern over privacy and security issues.
With over 700 million photographs and videos sent each day, it’s no surprise Snapchat are concerned about security. In fact, a recent comparison of social media sites found that Snapchat is one of the more popular programs, which comes as a surprise. It’s long been the case that Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are the dominating social media networks, but recent results show that Instagram and Snapchat are coming in second and third to Facebook for smartphone-using Americans aged 18 to 34 years. Apart from the recent issue with the belief that Snapchat servers being breached, it has also had to deal with third-party app issues.
Unfortunately for Snapchat, it’s seen its fair share of security issues in the past few weeks. Allegedly, user’s photos were stolen and posted online through the use of third-party apps. Through the use of reverse engineered application programming interfaces (APIs) to access the services, the apps were able to access user’s accounts and create a huge vulnerability in Snapchat’s security. In response, Snapchat is sending emails to those who have been utilizing third-party apps in warning, “We’ve noticed that you’re using a third-party application to access Snapchat, putting yourself (and possibly your friends) at risk. Please change your password and stop using third-party applications when you access Snapchat.”
Snapchat further advises that using third-party applications can compromise accounts and is a violation of the Terms of Use. If users continue to use third-party apps to access Snapchat, their account will be locked. Further still, if users continuously seek a means to use Snapchat through third-party apps their accounts will be permanently locked. Snapchat has said it will develop a public API to avoid further security breaches, however, there is no information as to when that might be.