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Snapchat recently came clean and agreed to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission regarding claims that they made misrepresentations to consumers that violated users’ privacy and security. The allegations were centered on Snapchat’s video and photo feature. According to Snapchat, users could send images and videos that would disappear forever after a designated time that was determined by the sender. Now it appears that those promises were false. The complaint also alleged that the app tracked users’ locations and collected data without their consent.
Snapchat recently reached a settlement with the FTC and released a statement saying:
“While we were focused on building, some things didn’t get the attention they could have. One of those was being more precise with how we communicated with the Snapchat community.”
According to the complaint, Snapchat made promises that photo and video messages would disappear forever. Yet this was far from the truth. Consumers could use third party apps to log into the Snapchat service and view and save snaps indefinitely. Despite security researchers’ warnings, the company did nothing to prevent this from occurring and continued to misrepresent their consumers.
Another issue on hand was that consumers believed they were sending personal images to a friend, when in reality they were sending them to complete strangers. This was due to the fact that Snapchat failed to verify users’ phone numbers during registration.
Yet another part of the FTC complaint was particularly concerning. Snapchat’s failure to secure the Find Friends feature on their app resulted in a security breach that allowed hackers to assemble a database of more than 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and phone numbers. The FTC warns that this information could be used for spam, phishing, and other unsolicited communications.
In addition, Snapchat collected iOS users’ contact information from their address books without their consent. Their privacy policy specifically claimed that the app only collected user’s emails and phone numbers for the sole purpose of finding friends. Yet Snapchat continued to collect user contacts’ information without their consent or knowledge.
The settlement with Snapchat is just another example of the FTC’s ongoing effort to ensure that companies continue to market their products and apps truthfully, and was part of the multi-national sweep on mobile app privacy. Companies are prohibited from misrepresenting themselves, their app, or any part of their privacy or security policies.
While the FTC did not impose a financial penalty on Snapchat, they will be subjected to independent privacy monitoring for the next 20 years. If they violate any term of their settlement with the FTC, they could face penalties of $16,000 per violation.