Image Credit: PhoneSpying
Oh, good, another reason to be paranoid of social media…
It’s no secret that nothing’s safe from prying eyes on the internet, but sometimes, it seems that the very people we think will not betray our trust are the ones that we should be looking out for.
A report from Motherboard on Thursday revealed that employees from Snap Inc may have abused their privileged access to user data, based on two insider sources. More specifically, several employees have apparently used internal tools to spy on specific users, a huge breach of privacy and trust on the users’ end.
One of these tools is called SnapLion, which reportedly provides “keys to the kingdom,” as put by one former employee who revealed the details of the report. This tool could be accessed by Snap’s ‘Spam and Abuse’ team and ‘Customer Ops’ department and was allegedly used to “gather information on users in response to valid law enforcement requests, such as a court order or subpoena.”
Although Motherboard reports that tools like SnapLion is not exactly against the law since they are used for a variety of legitimate reasons, Snap employees’ use of the tool was completely unwarranted and out of line. The two insider sources said that it did not occur only once, but rather “a few times” and was even carried out by “multiple individuals.”
In defense, one spokesperson for the company told Motherboard in an email, “Protecting privacy is paramount at Snap. We keep very little user data, and we have robust policies and controls to limit internal access to the data we do have. Unauthorized access of any kind is a clear violation of the company’s standards of business conduct and, if detected, results in immediate termination.”
