On April 20, 2025, the popular online student forum YikYak was hacked by unknown individuals. Since then, the app has been unavailable for use. 

“I can’t believe it,” sophomore Fiona Chan stated. “Where am I gonna complain about professors now? PlanetTerp? That place doesn’t have upvotes!”

According to individual research, the last post on YikYak before it fell was a simple text post, stating “Why does the food at the Y suck so much????? Like????”

YikYak was popular amongst students for the anonymity it provided, as one could create a post without their name attached to it — as long as they had an account. “It was nice there,” junior Jack Soy stated in an interview. “I could say… uh… stuff I probably shouldn’t say in this interview over there. Nobody knew it was me.”

However, that anonymity is now at risk. A group of computer science students with too much time on their hands found the list of email addresses associated with each YikYak post, meaning that everything everyone has said anonymously could be leaked and traced back to a person. 

When University of Maryland students heard this news, most of them rushed back to their dorms, calling their parents, friends, and significant others to tell them that they “loved them,” to “not look online,” and to “find them at these coordinates.” Unsurprisingly, the campus exits were packed with many cars fleeing in a rush. 

Redditors on the r/UMD subreddit are anxious about the migration of YikYak users. A post by user u/ZeroTerabytes expressed concerns about a large influx of political content, before stating that his “dms were open for anyone interested ;)”

UMD itself is unsure what to do about the situation. “This is something that we have no authority over,” a University spokesperson said. “If you do have the list of emails and all posts on YikYak, though, it would be very kind of you to hand them over. We do need to… eliminate our enemies on the inside.” When asked to clarify on this, they simply began to rant about how SGA funding cost too much.

Image Credits: Kenlynn Ingham