Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel's remark on expanding the business to ‘poor countries’ like India resulted in a number of Indians, over the weekend, uninstalling the app and giving it a single rating. The most recent retaliation came in the form of Indian Hackers leaking data of 1.7 million users.
According to a report in India Today, Indian hackers said that they found vulnerability in Snapchat’s database last year and had siphoned details of 1.7 million users. And as a mark of resentment against Evan Spiegel’s remarks against India, hackers leaked and made this data based available on the darknet.
They said that they had found the bug earlier but did nothing of it. “But ‘arrogance’ of the Snapchat CEO had miffed them. They have further threatened to carry out intensive strike against company on the virtual world till the CEO apologies for his remark,” the report states.
Indian hackers are among the top bug-bounty hunters in the world working on finding bug in systems of IT giants.
Snapchat, however, has not confirmed any such hack or leak. Snapchat faced backlash over the weekend after a Variety reported that CEO Evan Spiegel called India a poor country in a business meeting back in 2015.
Indian users began uninstalling the app and downgrading its rating to a single star on the app store. There were several comments too from disgruntled Indians over the CEO’s remarks. Not surprisingly, #Uninstall-Snapchat and #BoycottSnapchat have been trending on Twitter.
However, Snapchat refuted all allegations. "This is ridiculous. Obviously, Snapchat is for everyone! It's available worldwide to download for free," an international spokesperson of Snap said in a statement. "Those words were written by a disgruntled former employee. We are grateful for our Snapchat community in India and around the world," the statement added.