Snapchat formally apologizes for security issues from last year with an update

The company does damage control after the security breach, which revealed names and phone numbers of 4.6 million accounts

Around the end of December, a few researchers from the Gibson Security firm had published undocumented API and code to two exploits that not only opened up the service to spam, but also gave access to malicious individuals to the user’s profiles and phone numbers. They said that they had informed Snapchat of this fact way back in August, but the company kept this information silent and did little-to-nothing.

Critics and others had been urging the company to apologize and fix things and now, it seems that Snapchat is finally doing damage control, releasing a promised update that adequately addresses the security issue.

Here’s the full message from Team Snapchat:

Find Friends Improvements

This morning we released a Snapchat update for Android and iOS that improves Find Friends functionality and allows Snapchatters to opt-out of linking their phone number with their username. This option is available in Settings > Mobile #.

This update also requires new Snapchatters to verify their phone number before using the Find Friends service.

Our team continues to make improvements to the Snapchat service to prevent future attempts to abuse our API. We are sorry for any problems this issue may have caused you and we really appreciate your patience and support.

Love,

Team Snapchat

This update is now available for all and users and they will have the ability to disassociate their phone numbers from their user names, which makes it harder for hackers to tamper with their information, should any issues like the one from last year arise again.

However, the new users will still have to verify their Snapchat accounts with their phone numbers if they wish to use the Find Friends option. The Snapchat team has also promised further improvements to the chat service.

Source: Slash Gear