[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 93 (Wednesday, May 14, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 27611-27613]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-11111]


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FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

[File No. 132 3078]


Snapchat, Inc.; Analysis of Proposed Consent Order to Aid Public 
Comment

AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission.

ACTION: Proposed consent agreement.

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SUMMARY: The consent agreement in this matter settles alleged 
violations of federal law prohibiting unfair or deceptive acts or 
practices. The attached Analysis of Proposed Consent Order to Aid 
Public Comment describes both the allegations in the draft complaint 
and the terms of the consent order--embodied in the consent agreement--
that would settle these allegations.

DATES: Comments must be received on or before June 9, 2014.

ADDRESSES: Interested parties may file a comment at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/snapchatconsent online or on paper, by 
following the instructions in the Request for Comment part of the 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below. Write ``Snapchat, Inc.--
Consent Agreement; File No. 132 3078'' on your comment and file your 
comment online at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/snapchatconsent by following the instructions on the web-based form. If 
you prefer to file your comment on paper, mail your comment to the 
following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 
600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Suite CC-5610, (Annex D), Washington, DC 
20580, or deliver your comment to the following address: Federal Trade 
Commission, Office of the Secretary, Constitution Center, 400 7th 
Street SW., 5th Floor, Suite 5610, (Annex D), Washington, DC 20024.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Allison M. Lefrak, Bureau of Consumer 
Protection, (202-326-2804), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Washington, DC 
20580.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Pursuant to Section 6(f) of the Federal 
Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 2.34, 16 CFR 2.34, 
notice is hereby given that the above-captioned consent agreement 
containing consent order to cease and desist, having been filed with 
and accepted, subject to final approval, by the Commission, has been 
placed on the public record for a period of thirty (30) days. The 
following Analysis to Aid Public Comment describes the terms of the 
consent agreement, and the allegations in the complaint. An electronic 
copy of the full text of the consent agreement package can be obtained 
from the FTC Home Page (for May 8, 2014), on the World Wide Web, at 
http://www.ftc.gov/os/actions.shtm.
    You can file a comment online or on paper. For the Commission to 
consider your comment, we must receive it on or before June 9, 2014. 
Write ``Snapchat, Inc.--Consent Agreement; File No. 132 3078'' on your 
comment. Your comment--including your name and your state--will be 
placed on the public record of this proceeding, including, to the 
extent practicable, on the public Commission Web site, at http://www.ftc.gov/os/publiccomments.shtm. As a matter of discretion, the 
Commission tries to remove individuals' home contact information from 
comments before placing them on the Commission Web site.
    Because your comment will be made public, you are solely 
responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any 
sensitive personal information, like anyone's Social Security number, 
date of birth, driver's license number or other state identification 
number or foreign country equivalent, passport number, financial 
account number, or credit or debit card number. You are also solely 
responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any 
sensitive health information, like medical records or other 
individually identifiable health information. In addition, do not 
include any ``[t]rade secret or any commercial or financial information 
which . . . is privileged or confidential,'' as discussed in Section 
6(f) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR 
4.10(a)(2). In particular, do not include competitively sensitive 
information such as costs, sales statistics, inventories, formulas, 
patterns, devices, manufacturing processes, or customer names.
    If you want the Commission to give your comment confidential 
treatment, you must file it in paper form, with a request for 
confidential treatment, and you have to follow the procedure explained 
in FTC Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c).\1\ Your comment will be kept 
confidential only if the FTC General Counsel, in his or her sole 
discretion, grants your request in accordance with the law and the 
public interest.
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    \1\ In particular, the written request for confidential 
treatment that accompanies the comment must include the factual and 
legal basis for the request, and must identify the specific portions 
of the comment to be withheld from the public record. See FTC Rule 
4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c).
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    Postal mail addressed to the Commission is subject to delay due to 
heightened security screening. As a result, we encourage you to submit 
your comments online. To make sure that the

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Commission considers your online comment, you must file it at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/snapchatconsent by following the 
instructions on the web-based form. If this Notice appears at http://www.regulations.gov/#!home, you also may file a comment through that 
Web site.
    If you file your comment on paper, write ``Snapchat, Inc.--Consent 
Agreement; File No. 132 3078'' on your comment and on the envelope, and 
mail your comment to the following address: Federal Trade Commission, 
Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite CC-5610, 
(Annex D), Washington, DC 20580, or deliver your comment to the 
following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 
Constitution Center, 400 7th Street SW., 5th Floor, Suite 5610, (Annex 
D), Washington, DC 20024. If possible, submit your paper comment to the 
Commission by courier or overnight service.
    Visit the Commission Web site at http://www.ftc.gov to read this 
Notice and the news release describing it. The FTC Act and other laws 
that the Commission administers permit the collection of public 
comments to consider and use in this proceeding as appropriate. The 
Commission will consider all timely and responsive public comments that 
it receives on or before June 9, 2014. You can find more information, 
including routine uses permitted by the Privacy Act, in the 
Commission's privacy policy, at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.htm.

Analysis of Proposed Consent Order To Aid Public Comment

    The Federal Trade Commission has accepted, subject to final 
approval, a consent order applicable to Snapchat, Inc. (``Snapchat'').
    The proposed consent order has been placed on the public record for 
thirty (30) days for receipt of comments by interested persons. 
Comments received during this period will become part of the public 
record. After thirty (30) days, the Commission will again review the 
agreement and the comments received, and will decide whether it should 
withdraw from the agreement and take appropriate action or make final 
the agreement's proposed order.
    Snapchat provides a mobile application that allows consumers to 
send and receive photo and video messages known as ``snaps.'' Both the 
iTunes App Store and the Google Play store list Snapchat among the top 
15 free applications. As of September 2013, users transmitted more than 
350 million snaps daily. Before sending a snap, the application 
requires the sender to designate a period of time that the recipient 
will be allowed to view the snap, up to ten seconds. Snapchat markets 
the application as an ``ephemeral'' messaging application, and claimed 
that once the timer expires, the snap ``disappears forever.'' Snapchat 
represented, for a certain period, on its product description page on 
the iTunes App Store and Google Play and on the ``FAQ'' page on its Web 
site that snaps disappear when the timer expires. Snapchat further 
claimed that if a recipient took a screenshot of a snap, the sender 
would be notified. Snapchat also provides its users with a feature to 
find friends on the service, and prompts users during registration to 
enter their mobile telephone number in order to find friends.
    Count 1 of the Commission's complaint alleges that Snapchat 
misrepresented that when sending a message though its application, the 
message would disappear forever after the user-set time period expires. 
Count 2 of the complaint alleges that Snapchat misrepresented that the 
sender will be notified if the recipient takes a screenshot of a snap. 
The complaint alleges that several methods exist by which a recipient 
can use tools outside of the application to save snaps, allowing the 
recipient to view them indefinitely. Additionally, the complaint 
alleges that widely publicized methods existed by which recipients 
could easily circumvent Snapchat's screenshot detection mechanism and 
capture a screenshot of a snap without the sender being notified.
    Count 3 of the complaint alleges that Snapchat misrepresented in 
its privacy policy that it does not access location-specific 
information from consumers' mobile devices. Contrary to this 
representation, the complaint alleges that for a certain period, the 
Snapchat application on Android transmitted Wi-Fi based and cell-based 
location information from user's mobile devices to an analytics 
tracking provider.
    Count 4 of the complaint alleges that Snapchat misrepresented, for 
a certain period, in its user interface that a user's mobile phone 
number was the only personal information that Snapchat collected in 
order to find the user's friends. Count 5 of the complaint alleges that 
Snapchat misrepresented in its privacy policy that it collected only 
the user's email, phone number, and Facebook ID for the purpose of 
finding friends. However, the complaint alleges that when the user 
chose to find friends, Snapchat collected not only the user's phone 
number, but also, without informing the user, the names and phones 
numbers of all the contacts in the user's mobile device address book.
    Finally, Count 6 of the complaint alleges that Snapchat 
misrepresented that it employed reasonable security measures in the 
design of its find friends feature. Specifically, the complaint alleges 
that for a certain period of time, Snapchat failed to verify that the 
phone number that an iOS user entered into the application did, in 
fact, belong to the mobile device being used by that individual. Due to 
this failure, an individual could create an account using a phone 
number that belonged to another consumer, enabling the individual to 
send and receive snaps associated with another consumer's phone number. 
Additionally, for a certain period, Snapchat allegedly failed to 
implement effective restrictions on the number of find friends requests 
that any one account could make. Further, Snapchat allegedly failed to 
implement any restrictions on serial and automated account creation. As 
a result of these security failures, in December 2013, attackers were 
able to use multiple accounts to send millions of find friends requests 
and compile a database of 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and the 
associated phone numbers.
    The proposed order contains provisions designed to prevent Snapchat 
from engaging in the future in practices similar to those alleged in 
the complaint. Part I of the proposed order prohibits Snapchat from 
misrepresenting the extent to which Snapchat or its products or 
services protect the privacy, security, or confidentiality of covered 
information, including: (1) The extent to which a message is deleted 
after being viewed by the recipient; (2) the extent to which Snapchat 
or its products or services are capable of detecting or notifying the 
sender when a recipient has captured a screenshot of, or otherwise 
saved, a message; (3) the categories of covered information collected; 
or (4) the steps taken to protect against misuse or unauthorized 
disclosure of covered information.
    Part II of the proposed order requires Snapchat to establish and 
maintain a comprehensive privacy program that is reasonably designed 
to: (1) Address privacy risks related to the development and management 
of new and existing products and services for consumers, and (2) 
protect the privacy and confidentiality of covered information, whether 
collected by Snapchat or input into, stored on, captured with, or 
accessed through a computer using Snapchat's products or services. The 
privacy program must contain privacy

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controls and procedures appropriate to Snapchat's size and complexity, 
the nature and scope of Snapchat's activities, and the sensitivity of 
the covered information. Specifically, the proposed order requires 
Snapchat to:
     Designate an employee or employees to coordinate and be 
accountable for the privacy program;
     identify material internal and external risks that could 
result in Snapchat's unauthorized collection, use, or disclosure of 
covered information, and asses the sufficiency of any safeguards in 
place to control these risks;
     design and implement reasonable privacy controls and 
procedures to address the risks identified through the privacy risk 
assessment, and regularly test or monitor the effectiveness of the 
privacy controls, and procedures;
     develop and use reasonable steps to select and retain 
service providers capable of maintaining security practices consistent 
with the order, and require service providers by contract to implement 
and maintain appropriate safeguards; and
     evaluate and adjust its privacy program in light of the 
results of testing and monitoring, any material changes to operations 
or business arrangement, or any other circumstances that Snapchat knows 
or has reason to know may have a material impact on its privacy 
program.
    Part III of the proposed order requires Snapchat to obtain within 
the first one hundred eighty (180) days after service of the order, and 
on a biennial basis thereafter for a period of twenty (20) years, an 
assessment and report from a qualified, objective, independent third-
party professional, certifying, among other things, that: (1) It has in 
place a privacy program that provides protections that meet or exceed 
the protections required by Part II of the proposed order; and (2) its 
privacy program is operating with sufficient effectiveness to provide 
reasonable assurance to protect the privacy of covered information.
    Parts IV through VIII of the proposed order are reporting and 
compliance provisions. Part IV requires Snapchat to retain documents 
relating to its compliance with the order. The order requires that all 
of the documents be retained for a five-year period. Part V requires 
dissemination of the order now and in the future to all current and 
future principals, officers, directors, and managers, and to persons 
with responsibilities relating to the subject matter of the order. Part 
VI ensures notification to the FTC of changes in corporate status. Part 
VII mandates that Snapchat submit a compliance report to the FTC within 
60 days, and periodically thereafter as requested. Part VIII is a 
provision ``sunsetting'' the order after twenty (20) years, with 
certain exceptions.
    The purpose of this analysis is to facilitate public comment on the 
proposed order. It is not intended to constitute an official 
interpretation of the proposed complaint or order or to modify the 
order's terms in any way.

    By direction of the Commission.
Donald S. Clark,
Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2014-11111 Filed 5-13-14; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6750-01-P