How Snapchat's Lack of a 'Save' Feature Compromises Its Users

Whether the alleged hack of third-party Snapchat-saving databases and imminent leak of thousands of private photos is real or not, news of "the Snappening" begs the question: Where is the "save locally" feature, Snapchat?

To start, let's note that I don't know whether the alleged hack of 100,000 nude Snapchats, many of them presumably from underage teens given Snapchat demographics, is real or not. Either way, the point stands: Snapchat's lack of an easy way to save files—forever—is a major security risk by proxy.

By creating an app that instantly "deletes" photos, with no option of saving them, Snapchat made a second market for products such as Snapsaved.com, which save those photos on a (probably very illegal, considering the likely content) database somewhere, ready to be hacked.

Snapchat was supposed to make sending nude photos safer—it's only made it more dangerous. Think about it: What's a more enticing target? The personal, local files of a random 16-year-old in Kansas, or  an unencrypted database where her photos have been stored, along with hundreds of thousands of others?

By creating the market for third-party saving services, Snapchat has inherently become a more dangerous method of nude photo trading than plain old texting: At least in the latter, you can bank on the hope that your significant other doesn't turn out to be a dick after you break up.

And yes, you can point at Apple, whose iCloud service was likely hacked to access the recent trove of celebrity nude photos. But here it's even worse: Snapchat's lack of local storage has left users relying on third-party startups that have literally no track record—and perhaps no interest—in encrypting and protecting its users photos.

Snapchat, for its part, has washed its hands of the whole thing:

"Snapchatters were allegedly victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users' security," Snapchat told me in a statement. "We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed."

That's all well and good, but many of these third-party apps have flourished nonetheless, and for good reason: Its users want the ability to save photos. The spokesperson could not say if the company has ever considered a "save locally" feature. And while Snapchat can say that it doesn't control the actions of third-party companies, the fact that they've been allowed to flourish is concerning.

We've known now, for a long time, that the photos don't really go anywhere, and that they can be called back up through a variety of ways. That, in and of itself, is a concerning fact for a company now valued at $10 billion.

From the outset, the appeal of Snapchat has been the ephemeral nature of the photos—the fact that they "disappear." But, well, it long ago stopped being about just that, and the demand for an ability to save Snapchats has been evident for quite some time now.

A save locally feature wouldn't assuage all the fears of a mass hack—I have no idea if copies of snaps are saved on Snapchat's servers somewhere, but I'd rather entrust my photos with a company ( dubious as its record on privacy is) that's well established and, in theory, has the resources to lock them down in a responsible way, rather than a third party that's out to make a quick buck.

Snapchat can say all it wants about the legality of third-party apps that save snaps. It can even shut them down. But, until it lets users save the photos on their own, the company is just as much to blame for fostering an environment where hacks like this can occur.