![Snapchat, an application for iPhones and Android phones, allows users to send each other picture and video messages that go away in seconds. [AP/Snapchat, Inc]](http://www.jstudentboard.com/reporter/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/JSR_May19_Snapchat.jpg)
Snapchat is a photo messaging application developed by Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, Users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to other friends. The messages then “disappear” after a few seconds.
In the first week of May, the FTC accused Snapchat for deceiving customers. The FTC alleged that Snapchats do not actually disappear and that the company had not been honest about the amount of private data it collects from users. Additionally, failure to take proper security precautions resulted in a breach that gave hackers access to 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers.
According to Nico Sell, a security expert and founder of messaging application Wickr, the “deleted” photos or posts are probably lurking in an unknown server.
“It looks like it’s gone,” Sell said to ABC News. “Even when something is deleted from a device or a computer, it doesn’t completely delete. Your SMS – if you were to delete a text, I could still get it off the phone. It’s in the trash.”
After the revelations, some students say they are now unwilling to use Snapchat.
“This news makes me scared to use Snapchat anymore, since my pictures can be anywhere and accessed by anyone and anytime,” Van Nuys High School freshman Jihyun Park told JSR.
“I feel like we have no privacy at all,” he added. “Until I get reassurance that my pictures erase, I’m not going to use Snapchat.”
However, local student Katie Chiou says that it’s not realistic for Snapchat to be able to entirely erase everyone’s pictures.
”We could even take screenshots of our Snapchats,” said Chiou, a freshman at North Hollywood High, “so I’m just not surprised that our Snapchats do not disappear.”
Despite being upset with the service, Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies freshman Esther Yom says she’ll still use it.
“[Though] it kind of defeats the purpose of Snapchat, [and] I am still disappointed that they did not tell us honestly,” she told JSR, “[the FTC revelations are] not going to stop me from using Snapchat.”
Under the terms of the settlement with the FTC, Snapchat will be required to apply a privacy program and submit to 20 years of independent privacy oversight.
