Snapchat responded to a reported leak of photos sent through its
service, saying it was not a result of a breach of the
company’s security.
Instead, the company said it was a result of a leak from a
third-party application. Such applications access features of the
applications developed by companies like Facebook and Google, and, in
Snapchat’s case, applications that can send and receive snaps are at
fault. In its terms of service, Snapchat does not explicitly allow
third-party applications, and dozens of such applications have been
removed from the Google Play and Apple App Store.
“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,”
Mary Ritti, a spokesperson for Snapchat. “We
vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party
apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.”
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said this week that the company would begin
serving its first ads “soon” through the app’s Stories feature — a set
of snaps that can be viewed in sequence for 24 hours.
