Well, it’s happened again. Another security breach, more embarrassing photos and films leaked all over the Web. Throw in privacy issues and possible child pornography charges and Cyber Security Awareness Month is getting off to a really bad start…or at least, to put a more positive spin on it, hopefully making people more aware.
“Snappening,†as its been called, which was revealed over the past weekend, is a breach involving users of a web site called SnapSaved.com and consists of approx. 90,000 photo’s and 9,000 videos  shared by as many as 200,000 Snapchat users.
SnapSaved.com, as you can probably tell by the description is a web service that allowed users to covertly save incoming message. The service did this by using your login credentials to access Snapchat’s servers and then store the images permanently on the SnapSaved servers.
Hackers managed to access the SnapSaved.com web site and steal the content that users had been storing there. While most of the content is reported to be of every day life there is of course some content that is more personal and inappropriate for viewing by anyone that it was not specifically meant for.
It’s important to understand that the hack was not on Snapchat’s servers.
It’s important to understand that the hack was not on Snapchat’s servers. Snapchat has built a growing and loyal user base on the promise that anything sent over its network disappears after a set period of time, typically a matter of seconds. This obviously promotes users sending material they would not send over other services and can possibly lead to people being a little more daring than they should be. You can read Snapchat’s reaction to these issues here.
The breach brings home the message that whatever you post online may well end up online forever and could be seen by people that it was not intended for. In fact recently we highlighted the potential issues that Snapchat users may have if someone decides to take a copy of something that was not intended to live beyond a few seconds. You can view the video for this here.
Here are some quick steps you can take:
- Consider which third-party apps you and your family use. Clearly many of these apps have more vulnerability and less oversight than the actual services themselves. For the two bigger services, Facebook and Twitter, you can check: With Twitter, click on your profile image and select “Settings” and “Apps” to revoke access to applications you no longer use or do not trust. And for Facebook, in a browser, click the lock icon on the upper right corner and do a “Privacy Checkup” to review “Your Apps”. AVG PrivacyFix allows easy access to the privacy settings of major networks, you can download it here.
- Review your Security Settings on all your programs. Consider who you are sharing information with, and who has access. Do you know whom your child has friended? Clearly there are trust and privacy issues here as well between you and your loved ones, but a healthy discussion is certainly not a step over the line.
- Consider what content is being shared. It’s a matter of education that this content could be made public and may have value to hackers. This can be discussed with children in the same way you might discuss the danger in posting vacation plans or financial info.
We all need to be more vigilant in keeping our families, our businesses and ourselves safe and cyber-secure. And some the best tools we have are education, communication, and awareness.
