Snapchat Users Experience Naked Spam Attacks As Service Reaches 150 Million Pictures Per Day

Snapchat spam reached many of the services customers on Tuesday morning. According to company CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel, the service is now serving 150 million pictures a day, and, with that much activity, spam was sure to follow.

In a post on the Snapchat company blog, it confirmed that spam reached many users in the early morning hours. The attack appears to have occurred after an unknown person created multiple accounts and then sent messages to accounts that had been marked as public.

Most of the spam involved nude pictures, and they didn’t appear to have any motive behind them other than to send naked pictures to total strangers.

Snapchat allows users two options for receiving pictures. The first option is set to “only friends” and is the most secure option. With the first option, users must send and receive friend requests and add users to their personal Snapchat network of friends. The second option is a public profile that allows for a more open sharing network.

Engineers at Snapchat acted swiftly to stop the early morning spam. Immediately upon discovering the nude Snapchat spam, the company turned off account creation. Snapchat also shut down public Snapchat’s until the spam issue could be addressed.

According to Snapchat:

“Spam is a problem on many services with large audiences. We know spammers totally suck and we’re working on a long term solution to prevent spam from entering your feed. In the meantime, please adjust your settings to determine who can send you snaps. For a spam-free experience we recommend “Only My Friends” ”

Snapchat has come a long way in its relatively short time available for download. The service has moved from claims that it is nothing more than a “sexting service” to a worthwhile app that managed to drown Facebook and its own “Poke” competitor.