Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel (Getty Images)

After the recent leak of 4.6M usernames and phone numbers, Snapchat has been working on an update of the application to prevent future “abuse.”  

The company responded to the New Years Eve privacy breach, explaining that “it was possible for an attacker to use the functionality of Find Friends to upload a large number of random phone numbers and match them with Snapchat usernames.”

Yet, they assured users, “no other information, including Snaps, was leaked or accessed in these attacks.”

A website called SnapchatDB.info claims to have created a database of the 4.6M Snapchat accounts “to raise awareness on the issue” of how easy Snapchat makes it to obtain other people’s personal information. 

“People tend to use the same username around the web so you can use this information to find phone number information associated with Facebook and Twitter accounts, or simply to figure out the phone numbers of people you wish to get in touch with,” explains the database site.

Despite Snapchat’s promises to create an updated version of the app that allows people to choose not to appear in Find Friends, for an app that bases its appeal on secrecy and privacy of the photos shared, the effects of the blow will be long lasting. 

"The problem for Snapchat is kids seek it out because they think it's more secure," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at technology advisory firm Enderle Group told the Los Angeles Times. "This goes against the brand. It makes them seem less secure when their advantage is supposed to be more security." 

After Gibson Security warned Snapcaht that its code left loopholes which could enable hackers to access user’s information in August, Snapchat chose not to respond. After Gibson Security publicly exposed the way that Snapchat opened itself and its users up to hacking, Snapchat refused to accept the gravity of the situation, instead regarding it as a merely “theoretical” problem. 

“I believe at the time we thought we had done enough,”told Carson Daly on TODAY Friday, in response to Daly’s inquiries about why Snapchat didn’t take the warnings from Gibson Security more seriously.  

If the Snapchat founders were hoping to shed their images as irresponsible, 23-year-old frat boy billionaires, perhaps they should have considered taking responsibility for the security breach, or you know, tried harder to prevent it. 

Contact Executive Producer Sara Newman here. Follow her on Twitter.