Upset About the Snapchat Data Breach? Delete Your Account

For the past few days we’ve seen a lot of stories in the news about the Snapchat data breach. Just search for “Snapchat security” and you’ll get an enormous list of stories about the breach. According to The Verge, 4.6 million Snapchat  usernames and numbers were leaked online.

SnapchatDB is an unofficial site run by an anonymous person or group that allows anyone to access the information. The database is a SQL dump with a CSV text file that shows details of the Snapchat users as well as their location. Interestingly the last two digits of the user’s phone number is blurred out. Also, according to thread on Reddit, users have reported the area codes represent that all affected users are based in North America.

A research group called Gibson Security claims to have discovered the security hole back in August. Snapchat didn’t take any action to patch the hole until the damage was done. For the company response over the holiday you can check out  the Snapchat blog post addressing the vulnerability.

Note: If you want to find out if your Snapchat account was hacked, check out this GS Lookup Snapchat tool. Just type in your username and you’ll get good news or bad.

If you feel let down by the company – a few lines of code would have fixed the exploit in the “Find Friends with Phone Numbers” feature – then you might want to just get rid of your account entirely.

Delete Snapchat Account

Log in to this Snapchat Support page with your current username and password. Then click on Delete My Account.

That’s it. You won’t get another warning asking if you’re sure you want to delete it. You’ll just see the following message.

The cool thing is it seems when you delete your account it’s deleted right away. Unlike the hassle involved with deleting a Facebook account, Snapchat makes it a simple affair.

What’s your take on Snapchat? Are you going to delete your account due to the security breach?  I’m actually curious how many of our readers even use it? Leave a comment below and tell us about it.