A group of hackers on 4chan claim to have hacked a third-party Snapchat image sharing service and made away with potentially hundreds of thousands of Snapchat photos and videos that users thought had long been deleted. Many of the photos have since started showing up online.

Initial reports suggested the third-party client in question was Snapsave although we're now hearing that the site affected was actually SnapSaved.com (past tense). Reports are conflicting at this hour but most seem to agree that there are at least 200,000 images in the stash, far more than were involved in last month's celebrity iCloud hack. Many of the Snapchat photos in question are said to be of underage teens and sexual in nature.

Snaps received over the official app vanish after just a few seconds but with a third-party app, users can save the Snaps they receive without the sender knowing.

Again, it's unclear exactly how the hackers came into possession of the photos. Some reports suggest a traditional hack was to blame while others suspect the siphoning job has been going on for years. It's even possible that the third-party service in question was build specifically to steal users' images.

In a statement on the matter, Snapchat said they can confirm that none of their servers were breached and they are not the source of the leaks. Snapchat users were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that is expressly prohibited in the Snapchat terms of use agreement.

While Snapchat may not be at blame here, it's certainly not helping their overall image.