Last week security researchers published a way to skim Snapchat's full database, and it appears someone did it before the vulnerability was addressed. A website called SnapchatDB! has appeared posting SQL/CSV files that it claims contain the username and associated phone number for a "vast majority" of the service's users, with the last two digits of the numbers obscured. That amounts to 4.6 million pairs, although actually downloading the files to actually use them or verify the claim seems impossible, presumably due to an overload of traffic. We don't know who is behind the website (its WHOIS record is hidden by WHOISGuard), but the homepage claims this release is happening to "raise awareness" of the fact that companies with our private information should be more careful with it. As the site mentions, even the info included could be enough to figure out someone's phone number from their username (if it's also used publicly on Twitter, for example), especially problematic for those with unlisted numbers. They also have not ruled out releasing the uncensored database "under certain circumstances," so if you've ever used the service, this may be something to keep an eye out for.
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UK optics and photography company J. Lancaster & Son patented a telescoping camera that fit into a pocket watch-styled casing back in 1886. Although to fit the photo gear inside, they had to ditch the timekeeping tech entirely. It may have been good for secret selfies and clandestine snapshots, but not much else. Spin the clock ahead nearly a century to the 1970s and watches with LED displays like the Hamilton Pulsar P1 and Sinclair Black Watch began to pop up on the market. They had a futuristic look and backlit watch faces, but often suffered from poor battery life. During that same decade, the liquid crystal display (LCD) was also developed. It appeared in watches like the 1974 Casiotron, and converted electrical signals into illuminated digits that could display both time and date, and were typically more reliable in build quality than LEDs. By the time the '80s rolled around, watches were getting significantly smarter with the addition of calculator functionality, but it wasn't long before watches like the 1984 Seiko UC-2000 and its UC-2200 keyboard peripheral allowed users to do actual computing. By 1999, Samsung seemed to find inspiration in the tech-laden detective comic Dick Tracy and introduced its SPH-WP10, a CDMA-based watch that offered wireless phone functionality in a wrist-worn form factor.
Although the technology was still young, it was an iterative step forward in consumer wearables and as the years passed, other watch-based devices popped up -- with varied results. Around the same time as the WQV-1 launch, IBM teamed up with Citizen and Tokyo Research Lab to work on its Linux-based WatchPad 1.5, exploring the possibilities of high-functioning, wrist-worn computers, but it failed to go beyond the prototype phase. In 2004, Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) started arriving on watches to deliver MSN Direct services over FM airwaves, only to be discontinued in 2008 (followed by the MSN Direct service itself in 2012). The camera didn't make a splash in the market again until this year, when Samsung launched the Galaxy Gear smartwatch. It's an ambitious device, aiming to outdo the relatively simplistic functions of the popular Pebble by adding a full-color touchscreen and a 1.9-megapixel camera. Although watches have bigger brains than ever, the ones that have made it to market often fail to gain enduring success and many seem to rely heavily on companion devices for any significant functionality. If wrist-worn form factors continue to come up short in the camera department, snapshot addicts may have to look elsewhere for photographic convenience.