Scandal | Snapchat employees accused of misusing personal data

It’s been a rough 18 months for Snap Inc, parent company of social media platform Snapchat; in October 2018 the brand’s stock fell dramatically by 10% to a new low of $6.84 – a massive 60% below its IPO price. What followed was a revolving door of senior management, with the likes of CFO Tim Stone and HRD Jason Halbert.

Now, mere days after CEO Evan Spiegel announced that his overhaul of the brand’s leadership team was complete, Snapchat has fallen headfirst into a new controversy.

A report published on Vice subsidiary Motherboard has revealed that employees across several departments can view user location information, saved Snaps, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and other sensitive data through an internal tool known as ‘Snaplion’.

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Whilst it is unknown if use of the tool was promoted by management, or the extent to which the tool was abused by staff, one anonymous Snapchat employee was quoted telling a Motherboard journalist that to their knowledge, data access abuse happened at least ‘a few times’.