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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

People are outraged over being spied on, but can't see the value in an private chat tool?

Edit I meant private, not anonymous.

Snapchat is not only not anonymous, but it's a pretty poor platform with a significant number of past security flaws. About six months ago their API was exposing cellphone numbers for any username (to their credit, when I pointed this out to them they did patch it pretty quickly). Hardly private.

Even if they're not good at it, at least their point is privacy. That's already better than most chat tools.

Ephemeral messages is not the same as privacy. A service based on privacy wouldn't publicly show who you communicate with most often.

You think Snapchat is in any way anonymous or private?

Yes, in every way that matters to most people.

Except for the ways in which people are outraged over being spied upon.

I feel you, but you're conflating "angry, principled nerds" with "most people". If you really think people outside your filter bubble are "outraged", look further.

I mostly agree, but I was responding to sp332's suggestion that Snapchat does anything to solve the NSA "problem".

Ah, I must've read your comment out of context. My bad!

"in every way that matters to most people"

It makes you think, doesn't it?

Maybe the NSA is funneling investment to get their hooks into Snapchat, preventing it from being used as a means for enemy spies and agents to send each other temporary messages.

My jailbroken iPhone saves every snapchat that I get without notifying the other party. It also makes all snaps viewable for unlimited time and I can even send snaps of pictures in my camera roll to make it seem as if I took the picture in the moment.

Look up "Phantom". It's a jailbreak tweak for iOS available in Cydia.

Trust matters.

An interesting statement, given that the problem that Snapchat addresses is that its users don't trust each other.

Otherwise they could send their embarrassing pictures by plain old e-mail with a request 'please do not forward'.

Instead they place proxy-trust in Snapchat to enforce that restriction; if that trust falters, so does Snapchat.

"But it's probably not worth the effort, they wouldn't do it"

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