Thousands Of Snapchat Photos Leaked, Snapchat Says It Is Not Responsible And Blames Third-Party Apps

There is some bad news for Snapchat users. About 13GB of private Snapchat photos and videos, which are supposed to be deleted after a certain amount of time, are being circulated through 4Chan. The affair has been dubbed The Snappening by 4Chan users and has prompted Snapchat to release a statement saying that it is not responsible for the leak.

"We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks," a Snapchat representative said in a statement. "Snapchatters were victimized 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."

Earlier this year Snapchat, which has been valued at $10 billion, had suffered a major breach that caused private data, such as a user’s phone number, to be exposed. In May, it had to settle with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over misleading claims when it was discovered that photo messages, which were supposed to disappear forever, turned out not to be the case.

But for this case, what third-party apps or websites are responsible for this invasion of privacy has yet to be determined. However, Business Insider has pointed to Snapsaved.com, a site that appears to no longer be in operation, and the Snap Save app as potential sources of the leak. Meanwhile, an assortment of photos has been traced back to SnapchatLeaked.com, indicating that the photos could have been circulating for months.

Where do you think the source of the leak originated from? Snapchat itself, or a third-party app or website?