Crime & Safety

Glen Rock Residents Bombarded By Anonymous Porn Blasts

Residents in Glen Rock receiving porn messages from unknown senders through mobile app SnapChat, according to police.

The Glen Rock Police Department is alerting residents to be on the lookout for the transmission of pornography through a popular mobile phone app.

According to Detective James Calaski, police on Tuesday morning fielded complaints that Glen Rock residents have received pornographic images of adults from unknown parties through the mobile app, SnapChat.

"Nobody knows who's sending it out," Calaski said. "It's not coming from one account and we've heard reports of other towns getting it."

Because of the high volume of recipients and the multiple sending accounts, police believe the images are spam messages sent from afar.

Find out what's happening in Ridgewood-Glen Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

SnapChat posted on its blog that the issue was widespread.

Early this morning, some Snapchatters alerted us that they had received unwanted snaps from people who weren’t their friends. Upon initial investigation, it appears that an individual created multiple accounts and sent snaps to Snapchatters with public accounts. 

Find out what's happening in Ridgewood-Glen Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Our engineering team responded quickly (nice work guys!) by temporarily turning off new account creation and preventing Snapchatters from receiving snaps from friends that they had not previously added on Snapchat. 


Some Glen Rock recipients have been teens while others are adults, Calaski said.

"Because of the nature of the activity we anticipated a lot of calls, so we wanted to put the information out there."

The situation in Glen Rock is unlike the one Ridgewood faced last month when students took nude photos of themselves and distributed them to other students using SnapChat. Those images were later posted on the Internet, prompting a police investigation.

"Multiple people received these messages; they're pornographic images but they're [of] adults," Calaski said. "It's not like a kid in school took the pictures and sent them around."

Glen Rock police are advising residents who receive the porno pics to not open them. Instead, recipients are asked to delete the messages.

The filing of a police report is not necessary unless there are extenuating circumstances, Calaski said.

As officials stressed in Ridgewood a month ago, Glen Rock police said the news of pornography hitting SnapChat gives parents a good opportunity to discuss with their children the potential dangers that come with new technology.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.