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Data Hack at Snapchat Follows an Employee’s Response to Phishing E-Mail


A data hack into Snapchat systems during the weekend followed when an employee at the company got tricked with a phishing electronic mail which enquired payroll information while posing as a message from Evan Spiegel the CEO of the company.

Snapchat however, has sent out an assurance globally telling the hackers couldn't breach its servers; therefore, there's been no compromise of end-user data; however, it has informed current and erstwhile employees because their secret details have been shared outside the company.

On Friday, one unknown staff member working for Snapchat, which makes widely used video as well as photo sharing application, got one e-mail telling him to provide payroll information, according to Snapchat's Sunday published blog-post. That e-mail asserting as a communication from Evan Spiegel CEO of the company seemingly appeared genuine enough to the recipient so he agreed to the request. Cnet.com posted this online dated February 29, 2016.

Nobody or nothing identified the e-mail as scam i.e. neither the staff member nor the spam filters, thus details like salaries, bank particulars and Social Security Numbers belonging to certain erstwhile and existing workers were divulged externally.

Although Snapchat didn't state what number of employees got impacted; it, however, said it would facilitate the affected employees with an identity-theft insurance as well as monitoring free of cost for 2-yrs.

Meanwhile, the hack could possibly give rise to some embarrassing situations internally of Snapchat once the information got exposed. For, any employee of the company would perhaps find it extremely difficult to resist having a glance at what his co-workers were getting as their salary. So even with all the best efforts, the majority of organizations overlook establishing adequate defensive measures vis-à-vis data hacks. Only in 2015, organizations globally encountered 1,673 data hacks while losing more than 707m records.

Snapchat's limited declarations included that the scam occurred to it alone following which the company had informed the FBI about it and that it would be providing the non-chargeable ID-theft insurance along with monitoring for 2-yrs to all affected employees.

The company wouldn't give further details as investigation into the incident continues.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/8/2016

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