We had the Fappening, now we've had the Snappening. Yes, a leak of up to 100,000 photos and videos sent by ordinary people via Snapchat has happened. Except it's not as simple as users of 4Chan (you guessed it) going on to Snapchat and somehow harvesting loads of nudies in a bid to show just how powerful they are.
Back in May, the people behind Snapchat said: 'It's sometimes possible to retrieve data after it has been deleted. So… you know… keep that in mind before putting any State secrets in your selflies.' However, in the wake of The Snappening, which happened on Sunday night, those same people are now saying: '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.'
READ MORE: Jennifer Lawrence Says Nude Photo Leak Was A Sex Crime
In normal-person speak, that means that the leaked Snapchats (uploaded as one 13.6GB file on to a website with a big 'download' button) weren't only sent or received over Snapchat, but were sent via a third-party app called SnapSave. This app is downloaded with the sole purpose of saving Snapchats without letting the sender know. Using plain, normal Snapchat, you'll know if someone takes a screengrab of your Snap, as you'll get a notification. However, if that person is using SnapSave, they can take a screengrab of your Snap and you will be none the wiser. It's these photos – the ones that have already been intercepted by someone nerdy and distrustful enough to download SnapSave – that have now been hacked by 4Chan's uber-nerds on a power trip.
Those who think they might be victims of the Snappening – normal people (some underage!) who've had their photos hacked, none of whom have been identified as yet but many of whom are thought to be European – are understandably beginning to panic. And, even more predictably, the blame-game is beginning.
One Twitter user has even compared using Snapsave to 'digital chlamydia,' with the idea that if you're saving nudies of someone, you're leaving them open to a threat. Or that sending photos to someone using Snapsave is like having sex with someone who might have chlamydia.
But surely it's worse than that. OK, chlamydia can directly affect your physical health, leaving you infertile if untreated, where leaked nudes can't. But, if you do get chlamydia, at least you don't have to tell anyone (you should if it's someone you've had unprotected sex with, though), and so only the people you tell might use it as a way of shaming you. Sure, if you tell the wrong person that you have chlamydia, they might tell loads of other people, but that's a secret being shared, not a photo of you naked.
So what is the Snappening, if not a lot like an STD? It's another example of 4Chan users having way too much time on their hands and committing a breach of security that may well be illegal – especially if any photos are of underage people. And though we'd love to say that everyone over 18 should be able to send nudes to whoever they like (over 18 too!), there has to be a certain level of trust there to keep people safe.
Then again, as creepy as it is that you might have people saving your photos – intended to be blink-and-you'll-miss-it surprises – on to Snapsave, it might never be with a mind to show them to other people.
The real, undeniable creeps here? Those users of 4Chan who decided to hack and leak the photos just to show they could. People might complain that trying to shut them down is like policing the internet, but we think that would be pretty good, because right now, they're trying to scare people into behaving differently, basically acting as the morality police, while being thieves at the same time. Hopefully, the people who come out of this looking the worst, is them.
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** Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson**
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.