The Snappening: Snapchat Blames Third Party Apps For Nude Photo Leak

New information has been released about the second major nude photo leak of 2014. The people who run Snapchat are blaming third party apps for the Snappening photo leak.

After many private celebrity photos were released during the event the internet called the Fappening, thousands of nude Snapchat photos of random users across the world have been leaked via Reddit–this time called the Snappening. Now Snapchat seems to be blaming the victims of the Snappening, saying that using third party apps on the same device as Snapchat could result in an unwanted party, namely a criminal, getting access to your personal information. A blog post on Snapchat’s official tumblr gave the following warning:

“A third-party application is any application that accesses the Snapchat API, but hasn’t been built and maintained by our company… Unfortunately, these applications often ask for Snapchat login credentials and use them to send or receive snaps and access account information.”

Syracuse reported on the Snappening and its purported cause, which Snapchat maintains was not the result of their servers being breached. Instead, the Snappening was supposedly the result of many users installed third party apps that had access to Snapchat’s API (application programming interface), offering users special services but requiring their Snapchat login credentials.

“When you give your login credentials to a third-party application, you’re allowing a developer, and possibly a criminal, to access your account information and send information on your behalf,” Snapchat warns.

According to The Guardian, Snapchat is aware that the Snappening came about from a necessary inclusion of third party software. There are many third party apps that may or may not have had anything to do with the Snapping that otherwise provide a useful service, such as SnapSaved. But Snapchat claims “it takes time and a lot of resources to build an open and trustworthy third-party application ecosystem.” If Snapchat is right about the cause of the Snappening, many of those third party apps were not trustworthy at all.

Many of the leaked Snappening photos depict graphic nudity of non-consenting users, some of which were underage at the time the photos were taken. The Snappening could result in the same sort of criminal investigation happening after the Fappening, which also had one instance of child pornography in the mixture of celebrity nudes. Some of the victims, including movie star Jennifer Lawrence, have been actively seeking prosecution of the culprits behind the Fappening, which many consider to be a sex crime. The Snappening could result in even greater charges being filed against the Snapchat hackers — if they’re ever tracked down.

Some Redditors have issued a warning of their own, claiming some Snappening files have viruses.

What do you think about the Snappening leak?