Snapchat gets compromised, but user data should be safe

There's no small amount of controversy that swirls around Snapchat, as people swear it's used for all sorts of bad things. In truth, it probably isn't, people just send messages and images, most of which aren't the least controversial. But now the company has another problem, though this one doesn't involve anything lurid.

Instead it's actually the company's employees who were compromised and the service is attempting to apologize for this breach.

Blame has been laid, though not by name, as Snapchat only claims it to be the responsibility of "one employee" who succumbed to a phishing scam.

Snapchat explains "Here’s what happened: Last Friday, Snapchat's payroll department was targeted by an isolated email phishing scam in which a scammer impersonated our Chief Executive Officer and asked for employee payroll information".

Red flags should have gone up at this point, but the employee in question complied. That resulted in the payroll information on both current and former employees being disclosed to an external location.

Snapchat claims it responded quickly when it found out about the breach -- four hours the company says. It also states that none of its customer data was compromised. It says it notified the FBI of the potential problem.

To its credit, Snapchat says "We began sorting through which employees -- current and past -- may have been affected. And we have since contacted the affected employees and have offered them two years of free identity-theft insurance and monitoring".

The service also says it will double-down on its employee training to try and make sure these things don't happen again in the future. Finally, it states that "Our hope is that we never have to write a blog post like this again".

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