
Snapchat Says Sorry for Data Breach, Updates Apps With Find Friends Opt-Out - kirtijthorat
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/09/snapchat-updates-android-ios-apps-with-new-security-features-and-finally-says-sorry-for-december-data-breach/
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pkfrank
A ridiculously tepid non-apology apology considering the scale of the breach.

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minimaxir
They said the word "sorry," which is an improvement.

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kirtijthorat
It’s taken a while but SnapChat has finally said sorry for their infamous data
breach. But the question still remains is what would you do if your were one
of the victim of the 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers that were leaked.
Would you just accept an apology? I don;t thinks so.

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cdcarter
My username and phone number were leaked. I have felt no negative impact from
this happening. I am mildly annoyed that someone went through the process of
making a full database, but I willfully gave my phone number to snapchat for
the express purpose of letting people identify it with my username.

I accept an apology.

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wellboy
Cut the guy some slack, he also has to learn. Do you think you would have
known straight away how to defend your company against the press, hackernews
haters and how to apologize to millions of people when you were 23??

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logn
I wouldn't have bet $3,000,000,000 I did though.

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purereason
I know it's hard for companies to admit it when they make mistakes / fail, but
I think it's important that they do. There's always the risk of litigation
etc.. but I think that at the end of the day, given that you can't undo the
past, it's always best to come froward and apologize. I know it's talking from
the sidelines, and there are probably a lot more considerations that go into
it, but as a consumer I do feel better about a company that fails and then
takes responsibility for it.

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unreal37
I don't think Snapchat has admitted to any mistakes. What they have said is
they are sympathetic to users who have had their data stolen by hackers.

They are using the word sorry in the "we are sympathetic" sense, not the
apology sense.

Sorry you feel that way. Sorry your kid got sick. Sorry your car got broken
into. The classic non-apology apology.

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cheshire137
Snapchat has always had the option to provide my mobile phone number in the
iOS app so people can find me by my number. I've never filled it in because I
was always uncomfortable giving out my phone number to some random app. When
the data breach happened, I checked and my phone number was not in the leak.

To clarify: the only way your phone number would be known by Snapchat and thus
could have been leaked is if you provided it to Snapchat manually, correct?

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jonlucc
Not on Android. As far as I can tell, I never provided my number to Snapchat,
aside from installing the app.

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3am
He should apologize for turning down $3B USD from Facebook.

edit - To answer your question: to his shareholders and employees holding
options, because it was the right decision from a CAGR perspective.

edit 2 - if they get acquired 2 years down the line for $5B, it will still
just be a CAGR of less than 30% from the FB offer. It's OT though, so I'll
leave the post up to collect my downvote punishment.

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sschueller
That would have been the right decision.

However Facebook making such an offer is just nuts. What are they buying? 90%
or more of the snapchat user base is on Facebook. Why dont they make their
own? Make a seperate app, make a new brand and push it on fb.

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minimaxir
They did make a separate app called Poke and it was heavily pushed.

It worked out as you would expect.

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onedev
Too late, already deleted my account. It was a useless app anyway. I
personally had no use for it. Friends would send me random stuff all the time
but I honestly didn't care. It was usually mass chats anyway.

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xtc
Opt-out should be default for this to be even relatively meaningful.

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lotso
User's had to opt-in to give Snapchat their phone number. I think this let's
you opt-out, even if you had previously opted-in.

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scrrr
So how does an apology make anything better?

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bertil
It’s a classic result in psychology that people who suffer from what can be
attributed to human error feel better after whomever they deem the culprit
apologises in a was they deem sincere. More practical examples include studies
noticing that patients tend to sue less after surgeons (personally) apologised
for negative outcome of surgery.

Expressing sympathy (which is generally considered distinct) also has an
impact, although that can be less surprising.

Explanations generally consider the preference for a consistent world-view —
think “We now all agree it was Brad’s fault, let’s now move on” above scape-
goating.

In this case, an apology would mean: users were not wrong to trust a well-
known app with their personal information, security professionals who warned
the company about the breach were not wrong to follow white-hat protocol; the
company should have acted on it. It's not clear in this case that ‘sorry’ is
an apology, as much as a show of sympathy. As I wrote in a previous comment, I
haven’t seen a single user complain about negative effect (or read much on
teenager-oriented platforms) so I doubt the sympathy actually is towards
typical users; on the other hand, the head-wrangling on Hackers News, and late
apology, seem to point at a real concern among security professionals who see
standard lowered. I would assume the largest issue is to have the indifferent
callousness of Snapchat management contaminate the tech industry, and its
perception by the main public; I would actually relate that to the lack of
outrage at Snowden’s revelation, and a couple more recent news on privacy:
“Our personal information is violated, stolen? Whatever…” Snapchat would make
‘Silicon Valley’ part of that line. Admitting that this is unacceptable would
help regain the general perception that personal information needs to be
handled with care, generally is and that large brands can be trusted to
protect it (be it from black-hats or unwarranted government officials) — yet
again, I'm not sure we can read this in SnapChat’s message.

