It’s official, Snapchat is trying to create a way for users to use their Snapchat account to connect with third-party apps.
Basically what they are hoping to do is to let users of the app give other companies access to their Snap data to help personalize other services. Does this sound familiar? Because it’s pretty much the same thing that Facebook just got in trouble for.
Mashable published some very sneaky screenshots on March 27th proving that this very well could be true, as it appears they are in the testing process.
Mashable saw a beta version of Snapchat with a new section called “Connected Apps” with texts that reads, “these apps are connected to your Snapchat account. Choose an app to control what it has access to.”
The only thing the app Snapchat has confirmed to be doing is they have an advertising API so people can buy adds through third-party dashboards, but it doesn’t allow anyone to use their Snapchat account on other platforms.
Obviously their intentions have not been confirmed, as this seems like early testing. But if this is an actual possibility for the app, users can very well be in danger of having private information, among saved images and videos, stolen without proper user consent.
Where this becomes alarming is that this is almost exactly what Facebook does and has done for years. They use an older version of that API, which allowed outside developers collect data from users without their consent.
It’s kind of peculiar that Snapchat is doing Facebook’s tactic while Facebook is in serious scrutiny in the media for this at the moment for their privacy scandal. Because of their decision to be a friendly app, this privacy breach has led to at least 50 million user profile data being exposed to other companies without the users consent. People are deleting the app all together because they are so outraged.
Think about it this way, every single time one of those generator tests pop up on your timeline and you want to see your answer, and they ask for your information in order to give you your result, you click “yes”. With each site you give that “yes” to, they are stealing your information in one loophole or another because Facebook allows them to by connecting their site with third-party’s to increase popularity.
Why would Snapchat want to risk the same? Granted, they already did a lot of dis-service to themselves by not correcting the new layout that still has users outraged.
Of course, this is all speculation, but the clues all add up to this being true based on these screenshots from Mashable. This could be scary for a lot of users, especially since we won’t know what information these third-party apps could be receiving.
Thus far, this is Snapchat’s policy on the information they do collect.
So far the only connections Snapchat has solidified with other companies is Bitmoji (which has lead to a great success), and it’s partnership with Shazam. They also have a few companies that sell video-camera sunglasses, called Spectacles. Luckily for users any videos that are uploaded and stored within the Snapchat app if you use the glasses, so no private pictures or videos are getting released anywhere.
Snapchat has not commented on this issue and is not expected to…Yet.
Featured Image via Pexels
