Snap shame as hackers publish thousands of images online

Hackers have released a “giant” database of user images once thought perished, in what has become dubbed ‘The Snappening’.   

Collected over a number of years, around 13GB of snaps have been resurrected and released online, according to website Business Insider.

Unauthorised “third-party services” that allow users to save Snapchat messages are being blamed for the security breach.

The company said in a statement: “We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks. Snapchatters were victimised 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.”

The latest snap shame marks the second blip in less than a year, after more than four million photos and usernames were leaked online earlier this year.

The stolen images were posted online to revealing site 4chan and another fake site called viralpop.com – but have since been deleted amid reports of many indecent images from a Snapchat user base of young 12-17 year olds.