The company has taken some steps to address the issue

Apr 18, 2013 11:49 GMT  ·  By

The creators of Snapchat, the popular photo messaging application, are warning users about a spam campaign that’s been doing the rounds for the past couple of days.

“Upon initial investigation, it appears that an individual created multiple accounts and sent snaps to Snapchatters with public accounts,” Evan Spiegel wrote in a blog post.

Security experts from Sophos have analyzed the spam and they’ve found that users have been receiving raunchy photographs of women from nicknames such as “Honey.Crush9.”

The spam messages invite recipients to join a Skype conversation.

Experts warn that complying with the request and connecting with the sender on Skype could mean trouble.

The ones behind the Skype account could send out links to malicious websites or even make automated Skype calls to spread bogus antivirus warnings.

The app is often used by youths to send raunchy photos of themselves because the app allows the sender to control for how long the recipient can view the picture before deleting it automatically. This means that the spammer could try to convince victims to send some compromising photos that could later be used for blackmail.

As a solution to this issue, Snapchat has temporarily disabled new account creation and has prevented users from receiving messages from individuals that they haven’t added to their friends list.

“Spam is a problem on many services with large audiences. We know spammers totally suck and we’re working on a long term solution to prevent spam from entering your feed. In the meantime, please adjust your settings to determine who can send you snaps. For a spam-free experience we recommend ‘Only My Friends’,” Spiegel added.

On the other hand, as Sophos’ Graham Cluley highlights, the company should have made this a default setting right from the beginning.