The Snapchat team has finally apologized for the breach that happened last December. Well, the team said sorry for the inconvenience at least, but it kept schtum about its lax security measures. Here’s an excerpt from the company’s blog:

“Our team continues to make improvements to the Snapchat service to prevent future attempts to abuse our API. We are sorry for any problems this issue may have caused you and we really appreciate your patience and support,” the Snapchat Team wrote.

If you’re wondering if CEO Evan Spiegel had any part in this half-hearted apology, all the bets are on no. If you’ve been keeping up with Spiegel’s attitude towards the breach, you’ll note that he’s consistently been blaming everyone but himself, or his team, for the breach.

Quick recap

Back in August, Gibson Security warned Snapchat about the loopholes in its codes that put its users’ information at risk. Snapchat didn’t bother to respond to the warning, so Gibson Security made the vulnerability public over Christmas in the hopes that it would do so. This vulnerability which was then used by hackers to match phone numbers and usernames – they then released a database of the acquired information on New Year’s Eve.

At first, Snapchat didn’t even acknowledge the validity of the breach, but when finally forced to, it did so grudgingly whilst laying the blame for the breach solely on Gibson Security’s shoulders, stating that the hackers used the published report to get access to the information.

In an interview with the Today Show, Spiegel described the incident as an “abuse.” He said that the hackers taken a “tool that we developed to help Snapchatters find their friends and used this to find the usernames of people that weren’t their friends.”

The hackers later hit back, saying that it wanted the public to know that their information was a sitting duck, and that even though Snapchat knew about the loopholes, it didn’t do anything to secure its user’s information.

Later, after a ton of bad press and criticism, Snapchat came out and said that it’ll be releasing an update to the app to address the security flaw, but it never did issue an apology to its users.

Snapchat argues that the information collected wasn’t damaging, since it only contains phone numbers and usernames, but the issue here is that the company is banking on user’s trust to keep their identities anonymous, and it didn’t live up to its promise.

Keeping things secured

If you’re a Snapchat user and you don’t want to fall victim to hackers, here’s what you can do:

First, make sure you version of Snapchat is updated as the company rolled out new improvements to the service so the ‘Find Friends’ feature can no longer be abused.

Once the updated version is installed, run the app and click on the cog icon to open the Settings page of Snapchat.

Tap on “Mobile #” to open up more options, then turn off the “Link username to mobile #” by swiping the switch from right to left, and you’re done.  Your mobile number can no longer be connected to your username.