It has now emerged that The Snappening is a child pornography scandal as majority of the nudes leaked by the hacker belong to minors as young as 13.
The leak contains videos and photos, which were thought to be have been deleted by Snapchat - a messaging service that allows users to send pictures and video clips with self-destruct feature.
The Snappening contains more than 100,000 videos and images sent using Snapchat. It was released by hackers who have been intercepting and collecting the images for years.
A 4chan user claimed that he was able to get the photos through Snapchat.
Proving that Snapchat was not foolproof, the hackers leaked personal images and videos, mostly belonging to users between the ages 13 to 17, the Business Insider reported.
Some reports noted that the hackers were able to gain access to the personal content of users by way of a third-party Snapchat client app, which was maliciously collecting every photo and video file sent through it for years.
The Snappening folder, which has around 13GB of videos and images, was posted online, via viralpop.com. The site has since been taken off, however, by then thousands had already downloaded the files onto their systems.
Snapchat, in a statement, maintained that the breach occurred due to a third party app, and hence it is not responsible for the leak.
This is not the first time that Snapchat has found itself embroiled in a child pornography scandal.
Back in 2013, Snapchat was tied to a child pornography investigation, after 10 boys - between the ages 13 to 15 - were arrested in Laval, Montreal for producing and sharing child pornography.
Snapchat also has a bad record of maintaining the privacy of its users, especially considering the 2013 privacy breach, wherein 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and numbers were leaked online.
