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So-called Snapchat hack & the question of where to place trust

October 13, 2014 By Anne Leave a Comment

It’s interesting to see headlines like “Snapchat photo leak shows users’ mistake was trusting each other.” That was the takeaway from a commentator in the Los Angeles Times. But the real takeaway should be: Don’t trust unauthorized third-party apps that claim to enhance or add convenience to your social media apps. At least, if you really want to use one, look into how it works and what it does with your data before using it.

 

Snapchat activity
Hard to read chart from Digiday.com says Snapchat’s at 400m snaps/day, with 50% of users 13-17, 31% 18-24. More than 1/2 in N.America.

That’s what happened with Snapchat over a period of years: “A third-party Snapchat client app has been collecting every single photo and video file sent through it for years, giving hackers access to a 13GB library of Snapchats that users thought had been deleted,” BusinessInsider.com reported.

I suspect 99% of Snapchat users know that screenshots can be taken of their snaps. They know disappearing photos and videos don’t necessarily disappear and, when people do grab screenshots of snaps, rarely is there any problem. This news story is not about friends; it’s about abuse of both the Snapchat service and its users. That exploit took the form of a database “as big as 200,000” screenshots that the New York Times reported “appear to have come from the accounts of people using Snapsaved, a smartphone tool that its creators said would allow users to store photos from their Snapchat accounts that normally disappear after 10 seconds.”

Snapchat logoSnapchat says it “vigilantly monitors the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.” So – as we keep noting here – safety and privacy are a shared proposition. Users need to be as wary of third-party apps as their social media service providers are. It wouldn’t hurt to make a dinner table or classroom discussion out of the Snapchat story – this is an important digital and media literacy lesson. But the takeaway from news of security breaches and criminal acts shouldn’t be that it’s a mistake to trust one’s friends!

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Filed Under: apps, hacking, Law & Policy, Literacy & Citizenship, Parenting, Privacy, Risk & Safety, Security, Social Media Tagged With: apps, cybersecurity, security breach, Snapchat, third-party apps

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2016 TEDx Talk on
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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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