Is there any better way to kick off 2014 than with three popular internet companies getting hacked within a week? First in the lineup was Yahoo. A malware attack on its advertising servers was detected as early as December 30 and had continued through last week. Since Yahoo is still a fairly large company despite losing much of its popularity to Google and Facebook, many people in various countries, mostly in Europe, were affected by the attack. Then came the hack on Snapchat on New Year’s Day, followed by the hack on Skype later that same day. Snapchat was compromised by a group of hackers that took advantage of a supposedly obvious code and hacked to show how easy it is to do so, hoping that the app’s creators will make the app safer for its users. Then Skype was hacked on two of its social media accounts. This hack was allegedly carried out by a group of Syrian activists who accuse the company of aiding the United States’ spying scandal.

The difference between these hacks is that the ones on Yahoo and Skype were unexpected and unprepared for, while the opening for the hackers on Snapchat had been noticed and reported in the week before the hack even happened. A security group of “white-hackers” that don’t exploit the hacks that they come across had found the code that would enable the hack and published it, but did the creators of the app do anything? Nope. Instead they decided that it wasn’t threatening because it wasn’t an easy hack to complete. Not threatening? Any hint of potential for the app’s users to be compromised or their personal information leaked should be threatening.

After the hack had been accomplished and the hackers had posted Snapchat users’ phone numbers (with the last two digits blurred out) on a website, the minds of many imploded-  people commented with sentiments such as, “I knew that that app was dangerous! I told you so!” It’s a shame because it was such a popular app (with about 4.6 million users), and now thanks to the negligent developers, it’s lost what little credibility it had prior to the hack. However, seeing as most people, especially teenagers, aren’t going to just delete it off of their phones immediately, I do hope that those who are still planning on using it are going to Snapchat more responsibly after all of this. As a Snapchat user myself, I have to admit that all of the seemingly overcautious parents were right. And if the app does lose many of its users, it’s no one else’s fault but their own. At least other popular social media apps and websites have competent people actually looking out for the safety and privacy of their users.