Snapchat employees spied on users with internal tool

One tool, called SnapLion, reportedly gives Snapchat employees the “keys to the kingdom.”

Your snaps seem ephemeral, but there are whole teams of people working behind the scenes at Snapchat and some of them have reportedly abused their access to your data.

Snapchat employees abused their access to data and used internal tools to spy on users, according to a report Thursday from Motherboard. The data abuse reportedly happened “a few times” and was carried out by “multiple” people. Two former employees told Motherboard the abuse happened several years ago.

Snapchat reportedly has several internal tools that let employees access user data for legitimate reasons, such as requests from police and to enforce its policies. One tool called SnapLion, which was originally intended to help comply with law enforcement requests, was used by multiple teams at Snapchat, according to Motherboard, and provided “the keys to the kingdom.”

Snap, the parent company of the photo and video app, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but told Motherboard that protecting user privacy is “paramount.”

“We keep very little user data, and we have robust policies and controls to limit internal access to the data we do have,” said a Snap spokesperson in a statement to Motherboard. “Unauthorized access of any kind is a clear violation of the company’s standards of business conduct and, if detected, results in immediate termination.”