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There is an easier way to solve this issue: Bug Bounty.

It worked for Google, it worked for Facebook and its working for Yahoo! Infact, it worked so well for Google that they recently increased the rewards. A venture-backed startup like Snapchat that stores private pictures (even temporarily) should have no trouble paying out $5k a few times for vulnerabities.

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The problem is they did not see it as a vulnerability, they touted it as a feature, and even made a blog post outlining how you could exploit it. That was the most WTF event in following this story.

They were aware of the vulnerability for months. They chose not to adequately address it. A bug bounty wouldn't solve that problem.

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