While I am not an avid Snapchat user, I know that many people are. In fact, there are about 1.55 billion monthly active users. Snapchat has a company blog and they recently posted an apology to their employees for a recent phishing attack. The blog, found here, explains the occurrence as “an isolated email phishing scam in which a scammer impersonated our Chief Executive Officer and asked for employee payroll information”. The phishing email was not initially identified as a scam so current and former employee payroll information was unfortunately disclosed. The phishing attack was identified as an isolated incident and reported it to the FBI within four hours . The affected Snapchat employees were offered two years of free identity-theft insurance and monitoring. Thankfully, none of Snapchat’s internal systems were breached, and no user information was accessed.
I encourage my readers to check out a previous blog of mine about spear-phishing! It certainly confirms the threat of spear phishing and how it is evolving. I also encourage you to be mindful of what and where you post your career information. It is better to be aware and prepared for these occurrences. Whether you work for yourself, a small or large company, information about you is made accessible so be sure to control it where and when you can!