Attention horny exhibitionists in a sexless long distance relationship: Snapchat isn’t technically as protective of your privacy as you think. The popular photo sharing service most likely to get you fired has apparently been cracked by tech firm Decipher Forensics in Utah which claims to have successfully recovered and saved deleted Snapchat photos hidden under irregular file names in certain Android smartphones.
Wait, it’s deep down in the what now? OK so you know how all Snapchat correspondence self-destructs ten seconds after it has been received? Turns out it doesn’t disappear completely. What actually happens is that all photos are automatically converted into a different file type and indexed on your phone in an area not readily accessible by normal people. If you’re a massive nerd on the other hand…
Speaking with The Guardian, Decipher Forensics wizard Richard Hickman said that the recovery process is actually quite simple.
“Most people think that once [phone data] is deleted it’s gone –
especially with Snapchat – and most people don’t even know there are
companies like us that can get these things back because they think it’s
gone,” he said. “With mobile forensics we can get everything from deleted text messages.
We can recover deleted photographs, multimedia messages. We can get back application data on multiple applications, calendar
data, phone records, contacts – we can pretty much take a dump of a
phone and research for any type of purpose.”
As it stands, the technique works only on certain Android phones but Hickman says he is currently at work on cracking iOS too. Here he explains how he did it.
