Snapchat lets users opt out of compromised feature

Snapchat, reeling from a recent hack that exposed millions of user names and partially redacted phone numbers of its members, will now let users back out of the feature that hackers abused. The company also said it would improve some mechanisms, including a tool known as “rate limiting,” to combat future attempts to abuse its service. In August, security research group Gibson Security warned Snapchat of a flaw in its “Find Friends” feature that could allow account details such as user names and phone numbers to be leaked. Last week, the group published proof-of-concept code showing how Snapchat’s API (application programming interface) could be abused to expose that information. Then, on New Year’s Day, a group of hackers paired the phone numbers with the user names of more than 4.6 million Snapchat users and posted them online. The hackers said that they could complete the partially redacted phone numbers if people asked them to.