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Comment by venomsnake | Hacker News Reader

I hate to play devil's advocate here (especially since I already have a post here) but I had a thought. For Snapchat some of the biggest selling points are the self destruct abilities of the media sent. So an unauthorized client puts a stake trough the heart of that claim (and the company). I see why they may be worried, but I think that they should have communicated their concerns more clearly and pleading, and not intimidating.

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The product is untenable, as it is impossible to guarantee that the message is not copied when it is viewed. No amount of pleading or threatening will change that.

Exactly. "Self destructing" messages are an illusion. Publicizing this fact may be bad for Snapchat's business, but it's good for their users who have a false sense of security.

When I heard of snapchat I spent two seconds figuring out that turning off your data connection after receiving the photo allows you take as many screenshots/view the picture as many times as you want (I have no idea if this still works).

So why create the app using an API that makes it so easy to interface with via HTTP? I guess it's just a case of "when all you have is a hammer..." thinking. If the differentiating point of your app is the self destruct feature then a more closed communication channel should be utilized. The snapchat developers have nobody to blame but themselves.

If they rely on the client to determine when things are deleted from their service, they're doing something wrong. Never trust the client software! The only thing a rogue client should be able to do is surreptitiously send a copy of your pictures Somewhere Else (for storage). All the pictures sent to Snapchat should get deleted on schedule, regardless of who or what sent the pictures.

If they allow the client to display the image, they allow the client to do anything with the image. Of course they stop serving images on a particular schedule. (I sort of doubt they stick with that same schedule in deleting from their central storage, but whatever.) Since Snaphax is completely client-side, however, their server policies are irrelevant.

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