The Snappening: Hackers Release Child Porn

In the past few months, the Fappening has been one of the most talked about blatant digital crimes against privacy. Many celebrities were affected by hackers stealing their pictures and flashing them on every site that would allow it.

On Thursday, anonymous members of 4Chan posted a new, and terrifying, burst of leaked photos.

Dubbed “The Snappening,” the new leaked photos were not of celebrities. People of all ages were affected by the Snappening as the hackers tapped into images taken for Snapchat.

Snapchat is an app that allows users to share photos of themselves with friends. Each item is deleted forever shortly after.

The Snappening is not thought to have been a result of hackers specifically targeting Snapchat. Instead, the anonymous parties seem to have targeted a website meant to be used with the app, Snapsave, according to Business Insider.

Snapchat owners responded to the Snappening by reminding users that using a third party app, or site, in order to save pictures is forbidden in the terms of use for the app.

Representatives of the app stated that they were never breached and were not at fault for the Snappening. They added, “Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice we expressly prohibit in our terms of use because they compromise users’ security.”

What Snapchat representatives failed to mention is that roughly half of their users are between the ages of 13 and 17, with some members as young as 10. According to the Mirror’s report on the Snappening, “the NSPCC found as many as 40% of young children have been swapping sexual images.”

The statistics indicate that a great deal of the 200,000 Snappening images are of children.

The original Snappening images released on 4Chan have been deleted, but that does not mean the Snappening is over for the victims.

In fact, it gets worse.

Anonymous users on the thread have threatened to make a searchable database of Snappening images.

That means the Snappening pictures will be easier to find and identify. The Snappening database will likely also put sensitive information of the victims at risk.

As previously reported at The Inquisitr, Jennifer Lawrence spoke out recently about the Fappening, “It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting.”

The words could easily be used to describe the Snappening as well.

[ Image courtesy of The Daily Dot/Illustration by Jason Reed]