Secret, the startup which allows individuals to share "anonymish" thoughts with everyone else, has introduced a program for hackers to look for vulnerabilities in its mobile app, TechCrunch reported. It also seeks to squash the bugs before it makes the rounds to the public.
The program was introduced just less than a day-and-a-half after a picture started appearing on Secret and Twitter which seemed to connect the email address of a user to posts they had shared using the app. The team at Secret quelled the bug nearly right away and unveiled plans to roll out the bug bounty for hackers who are tinkering around with the app, the report said.
The Secret team said in its post about the program, "Secret values the work done by researchers in identifying anything that may have been overlooked. We are committed to working with this community to verify, reproduce, and respond to legitimate reported vulnerabilities and will make every effort to quickly correct any vulnerability. We encourage the community to participate in our responsible reporting process."
Secret asks hackers to follow three simple rules if they choose to participate in the program. The first rule is that they should "make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data and interruption or degradation" of the services offered. They also ask hackers not to access or modify data not belonging to them. The third rule that all participating hackers should comply with is not to make any information public until the problem has already been addressed, the report said.
The Secret program came after other apps that assure users of anonymity had been hacked and user information exposed. In December last year, Snapchat was hacked, revealing information linked to 4.6 million of the app's users. Snapchat apologized for the incident over a week later and introduced more security features to make certain that the breach won't happen again, the report said.
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