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> I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it.

It takes a special kind of stupid to even consider the idea that the photos are _really_ deleted.

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Well, then I guess you're calling a majority of the population (including doctors, lawyers, artist, musicians, etc) "stupid".

What you really mean is someone who doesn't understand how technology (and tech companies) work.

This could easily be mitigated if we enforced privacy laws saying that if you tell someone something is deleted, then it must actually be securely deleted. They might even be on the books already, just enforce them.

If something goes online, it stays online. Proxies, long term caches, archives, you name it. Relying on privacy laws of secure deletion would be the same mistake.

Delete buttons should really be labelled as "hide stuff from everybody except us."

First of all, my comment was meant in the context of the article which is the use of technology by _teenagers_, not the general part of the population. And even so, yes people should know better, privacy has a big place in the public debate nowdays.

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