Snapchat Settles Federal Charges It Misled Users

I like how the "settlement" in this case is just forcing Snapchat to do what it was supposed to be doing all along.

Under the settlement with the FTC, Snapchat will be prohibited from misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains the privacy, security, or confidentiality of users’ information. The company will also be required to implement a comprehensive privacy program that will be monitored by an independent privacy professional for the next 20 years.

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The "independent" monitor job is a really sweet political payoff gig. These sorts of contracts can mean hundreds or even thousands of billable hours yearly, at full rates, for a long, long time. In exchange, the purportedly monitored company gets insider political access through the monitoring firm's executives and can use all the favorable monitor reports in the event of future litigation.

Former U.S. AG Ashcroft started doing this for financial firms several years ago.

20 years? snapchat won't be around in 2 years.

Basically sums up that the core feature distinguishing them from other chat apps was truthfully never there to begin with.

Poorly designed implementation / management. I hope no-one buys them and they retire with little more than a treasure-trove of dick pics.

The bigwigs at Snapchat are probably laughing their asses off over this "harsh" punishment.

Okay, this is the first time I've heard about this Snapchat thingey and the only thing I can think of that people would use it for is sending disgusting pics to each other that they don't wanna have saved for later. As far as I can tell, if you don't wanna have someone keep whatever you're sending, you shouldn't snap the pic to begin with.