With the new Snapchat app update on its way to users, we can guess at least one New Year’s resolution the developers may have made – better data security in the future. The photo sharing application is known for its ability to let people send each other self-destructing messages and is especially popular among teenagers.
What was the problem?
But the software has been courting trouble over a couple of features, as was revealed in late December. Gibson Security noted that mischief-makers could find user information by uploading random phone numbers and matching it with those in the Snapchat database since people are requested to add this contact detail when signing up for the service, though it is not compulsory.
Apart from the aforementioned exploit, a second issue discovered by the group could theoretically allow hackers to create thousands of fake accounts. It did not help in alleviating worries when Snapchat agreed that these problems were real and had to be dealt with. This admission was however only made after 4.6 million accounts were compromised.
Incoming changes:
Worried? You will soon be able to opt out of having your number appear in the Find Friends database. Secondly, the introduction of rate limiting should help slow down attackers by putting restrictions on how many numbers can be uploaded and looked up at a go. There will be some other security tweaks too. But we’ll just have to wait for more on that.
As of now, the Snapchat app in Google Play Store or Apple iTunes hasn’t been updated yet. It looks like the developers aren’t working on the issue fast enough.