SHAFAQNA – After word spread last week that some 200,000 Snapchat photos had leaked online, third-party site Snapsaved.com is now taking responsibility for the whole debacle.
In a Facebook post over the weekend, Snapsaved.com admitted that a recent hack of its systems led to the leak, and provided more clarity about the extent of the breach.
“I would like to inform the public that Snapsaved.com was hacked,” the post reads. “Snapchat has not been hacked, and these images do not originate from their database.”
The site’s creators said they “immediately” deleted their entire database upon discovering the breach. Some 500MB of images were stolen, and the majority of affected users are Swedish, Norwegian, and American. No other personal information was accessed, they said.
Following news of the breach last week, Snapchat was quick to respond, noting that its servers were never compromised and that users were instead victimized by their use of third-party apps. Snapchat has warned about the perils of using non-official apps to interact with its service for quite some time.
Those in possession of the images claimed they were trying to organize the trove photos — definitely not safe for work, and likely containing pictures of underage Snapchat users — into a searchable database. But the creators of Snapsaved.com suggested that’s not likely to happen.
“The recent rumors about the snappening are a hoax,” they said. “The hacker does not have sufficient information to live up to his claims of creating a searchable database.
The creators went on to apologize for the breach, and assure users that they have “always tried to fight child pornography,” even going so far as to report some of its users to Swedish and Norwegian authorities.
“We never wished for this to happen,” the Facebook post reads. “We did not wish to cause Snapchat or their users any harm, we only wished to provide a unique service.”
The whole point of Snapchat is to send images that will eventually disappear, but services like SnapSaved are intended to let you save those photos.