Snapchat may lose investors over busted sexting scandal

Snapchat might wish to auto-destruct the recently busted sexting scandal, that could potentially put off its investors in a fund raising round hoped to raise the company's valuation.

The self-destructing photo-sharing app recently turned down a 3 billion dollar offer from Facebook, and just a day later, Montreal police arrested 10 teenage boys on child-porn charges for misusing the app.

According to the New York Post, the boys have been charged for passing around pictures of girls aged 13 to 15 in sexual poses or performing sexual acts.

The girls thought that the pictures would vanish within seconds, but the boys exploited the auto-destruct feature, which could include taking screen shots, finding hidden file or even taking a picture of the phone with another phone.

The report said that the privacy scare could crimp two-year-old, Snapchat's efforts to win up to 200 million dollars in a fund-raising round that could value the company at 3 billion dollars to 4 billion dollars.

Marketing professor at Pace University, Larry Chiagouris said that if the valuation is based on privacy protection and they fail to provide it, Snapchat will find itself losing its user base quickly.

Snapchat's CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel has claimed that users were sharing 350 million photos a day, comparatively Facebook's photo and video-sharing service Instagram posts an average 55 million photos a day.