MINNEAPOLIS — Investigators with the popular parent-teacher messaging app Seesaw are actively working to find the origin of an explicit image parents across the country, including in the Twin Cities, received through a bitly link Wednesday.
"I would recommend if someone receives a bitly link, do not click on it unless you know 100% where its going to take you," explained Sean Lanterman, a cyber security expert with Computer Forensic Services.
"Primarily the benefit to using bitly is just, taking a long link that takes up a lot of space and turning into something that's much shorter and easy to share," said Lanterman.
According to an update on Seesaw's website Wednesday night, the app itself wasn't compromised but several users' emails and passwords were, which hackers used to send the nude image.
While all bitly links aren't hacker driven, Lanterman says there's a quick trick before you click to consider, right from the bitly website.
"If you receive a bitly link, you're not sure where its going to take you, you can copy that link, paste into a web browser, and if you add a plus symbol at the end of that link, it will show exactly what's behind it, where its going to take you," explained Lanterman.
"So if a parent who received that bitly link hackers sent through the Seesaw app would've copied and pasted that bitly link into this search engine, they would've easily been able to see where that link was coming from?" asked KARE 11's Deevon Rahming.
"If they copied and pasted it and added the + symbol at the end, it'll show you what the actual web address is," answered Lanterman.
District leaders we spoke with say because of the way the messaging feature is set up, no child had access to the image.
Seesaw has disabled the messaging feature, notified those who were impacted and reset passwords for the hacked accounts. They say they'll re-activate the messaging feature once the image is no longer accessible from their servers.
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