With recent public focus on privacy, partially prompted by the NSA’s recent advances, several parties have risen to protect the rights of the public, as can be seen with the group Anonymous, who actively works to disrupt corrupt systems and corporations, or WikiLeaks, which publishes secret or classified information.

Another group of individuals, who remains unknown, pressed the popular social media platform Snapchat to increase online security by leaking over 4.6 million usernames and their correlating phone numbers days after Snapchat had been warned of the possibility of such a breach.

“I checked to see if my number was leaked, and thankfully it wasn’t… even if it was, the guys who hacked it censored the last few numbers, so it wouldn’t have been that bad. The target was Snapchat, not people,”

The unnamed group or individual hacker responsible has achieved their motive, as Snapchat has since released an update allowing users to bypass the “Find Friends” option and unlink their phone numbers.

While these groups are often portrayed as terrorists or traitors, they may be the public’s only defense against large corporations and oppression.

“I think it’s necessary,” said sophomore Alex Basgall. “It’s just like a union. Big companies can do whatever they want to us individually, but not as a group.”

 By Madeline White