POSTED BY Michael O’Brien
Ever wonder where your Snaps go once they have been viewed? Most assume that they are immediately deleted and gone forever, allowing themselves to take pictures and videos they otherwise never would have taken. However, with subpar security and third-party services such as the popular Android app SnapSave, users could have those Snaps, believed to be deleted, come back to haunt them.
Snapchat is the third most widely used app in the world, trailing only to Facebook and Instagram with roughly 700 million pictures and videos sent each day. The app was introduced in September 2011 as a new way to message people by sending “Snaps,” which are pictures and videos with added text, for a range of one to ten seconds. Once the allotted time passes the Snaps disappear from the user-selected recipients’ device and deleted from Snapchat’s servers.
In a recent Cnet article, it was reported that apps and websites not affiliated with Snapchat were hacked and a 13-gigabyte library of Snaps from an estimated 200,000 accounts were leaked. Two third-party services, the Android app, SnapSave, and website, SnapSaved, are the main culprits for the hack. The two services allow users to view photo and video messages outside of Snapchat and had apparently created backups of the messages. Snapchat’s privacy policy provides that they are not liable for this kind of leak and that they clearly state that there is a possibility Snaps may be accessed on one’s device even after being deleted by the app.
The app places blame on the user rather than their lack of policing third-party services because user Snaps were leaked due to the use of the third-party services to receive and send Snaps, which Snapchat expressly prohibits in their Terms of Use. Snapchat states that they monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps; however, SnapSave has been around since 2013. Users should be better warned about the use of third-party services by Snapchat if they are not going to act on policing them.
In an era where social media is so heavily utilized for sharing and viewing pictures and messages, people should be reassured that an app works the way it is supposed to without having to worry about them leaking publically. Also where nearly half of Snapchat users are between the ages thirteen and seventeen, this creates a lot of implications if their photos are being stored and then hacked and used in ways they should not be. If Snapchat is going to allow users under the age of eighteen to access the app, they should be held to a higher standard of policing third-party services that are capable of storing their Snaps. Even for those above eighteen, it is a total privacy violation to have their Snaps stored without their consent, and although it is a third-party doing so, Snapchat should at least better warn users of the risk their photos may not be permanently deleted after they hit the “send button.”
A way for Snapchat to solve this issue and not be liable for leaks caused by third-party services, nor be liable for policing third-party services would be to explicitly prohibit the use of them. Snapchat should make users assent to those terms before use of the app. This would cease the use of third-party services, and those in violation of the Terms of Use would have no recourse against Snapchat because they improperly used a third-party service. Therefore, the user is the responsible party for any leaked Snaps because they availed themselves to the risks of having their pictures leaked by not following Snapchat’s Terms of Use.
Blogger Bio:
Michael O’Brien is a Staff Member of the Journal of High Technology Law. He is currently a 2L at Suffolk Law. He holds a B.S. in Kinesiology and a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
