14 DAY TRIAL // With the US government listening in on pretty much everything we do online, there are few surprises left. The latest revelation is that the NSA snapped up and stored as many email address books and contact details as possible, from foreign companies or at least from overseas sources, so that it could avoid troublesome US laws.
In this environment, it's not really surprising that Snapchat felt the need to reveal just how much it shares with law enforcement agencies and when. Particularly because of the Sensitive nature of the service, users would like to know who gets to see what pictures and why.
Snapchat begins by explaining that all images are deleted from the servers as soon as they arrive at their destinations and are opened. This means that, once viewed, no one can ever gain access to that photo via the Snapchat service.
"As mentioned in our previous blog post, Snaps are deleted from our servers after they are opened by their recipients. So what happens to them before they are opened? Most of Snapchat’s infrastructure is hosted on Google’s cloud computing service, App Engine. Most of our data, including unopened Snaps, are kept in App Engine’s datastore until they are deleted," Snapchat wrote.
However, before the images are deleted, they are available and retrievable by Snapchat employees, with the right access permissions. Only Micah Schaffer, with Snapchat Trust & Safety, and cofounder and CTO Bobby Murphy are able to manually extract images from the data storage
The company however says this never happens unless it gets a request from law enforcement officials. Since May this year, this has only happened about a dozen times, Snapchat says. The service sees some 350 million images sent each day. The same rule applies to the new Stories, which stay available for 24 hours.
"Unlike unopened Snaps, which are stored until viewed or for 30 days if not opened, Snaps that have been added to your Stories are deleted from our servers after 24 hours. Stories are subject to the same legal requirements for access and disclosure as described above for Snaps," the company explained.