If only Snapchat could find a way to make emails disappear after 10 seconds.
The Snapchat Team issued an apology on Sunday after falling victim to an email phishing scam which granted an attacker, posing as CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel, access to several current and former employees’ payroll data.
In the formal apology issued in a blog post, the company said, “Last Friday, Snapchat’s payroll department was targeted by an isolated email phishing scam in which a scammer impersonated our Chief Executive Officer and asked for employee payroll information.”
However, Snapchat reassured readers that “none of [the company’s] internal systems were breached, and no user information was accessed.”
The L.A.-based social media platform says they responded “swiftly and aggressively,” reporting the incident to the FBI within four hours.
Then, the company took the high road in taking responsibility for the error in judgement: “When something like this happens, all you can do is own up to your mistake, take care of the people affected, and learn from what went wrong.”
In response to the attack, Snapchat offered their affected employees “two years of free identity-theft insurance and monitoring” and vowed to “redouble” their “already rigorous training programs around privacy and security.”
Although Snapchat handled the situation with an uncommon timeliness and professionalism, the team closed their statement with: “Our hope is that we never have to write blog post like this again.”
