back to article Think your smutty Snapchats can't be saved by dorks? Think again

Sexting has become even more inadvisable following the launch of an app which can surreptitiously store images sent using the self-destructing photo service Snapchat. Anyone looking to broadcast pictures of their naughty bits was given a boost when Snapchat first launched, because it purported to destroy images a few moments …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    Call me a prude by all means

    but if you post cock and fanny pictures of yourself, then gripe when they are available for all and sundry to see, you have no-one to blame but yourself.

    One minutes fun can turn into years of regret......

    If you don't have the common sense or maturity to deal with issues like this, don't take the pics in the bloody first place.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Call me a prude by all means

      Yes agreed, but peer pressure and teen hormones don't exactly help with rational decisions. From an adult point of view, yes if you do it them there is no one to blame but yourself. However, children even if they are in their teens are impressionable and sometimes very stupid.

      The fact that there is such an app will go round like wildfire and hopefully the learning curve will not be steep. Just because the app exists may mean those that might be stupid enough to do it might pause and think again.

      1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        Re: might pause and think again.

        > Just because the app exists may mean those that might be stupid enough to do it might pause and think again.

        Of course not. Teens (and older) were "sexting" well before Snapchat existed (well before the word "sexting" was ever invented by the media, in fact). Snapchat may or may not have made things worst recently (my money is on "didn't change a thing except for the wallet of its operator"). Snapsave won't make a difference either.

        Actually I'm pretty convinced that all these apps come and go without changing one bit either the number of nude selfies sent OR the number of them "leaked". There's always ways to save these and post them on 4Chan, and always will.

        Ultimately, leaked selfies have very little impact (unless part of something bigger such as systematic bullying - or the authorities meddling in very creatively moronic ways, such as registering every recipient and the sender as a sex offender). I would say it carries about the same "life-ruining" potential as "that day Millie wet her pants in PhysEd". But I may be wrong: it has to do with (mildly) naughty bits, so it's probably straight to hell or something.

        1. Anonymous Custard

          Re: might pause and think again.

          It's quite sad how responsibility for (and consequences of) your own actions seems to be an alien concept in modern times...

      2. sisk

        Re: Call me a prude by all means

        However, children even especially if they are in their teens are impressionable and sometimes very stupid.

        There, fixed that for you.

    2. Red Bren
      Joke

      Re: Call me a prude by all means

      If you're posting cock AND fanny* pics of yourself for free, you're missing an opportunity to make cash from a niche market.

      * This is a UK site using UK definitions

  2. jake Silver badge

    Whatever.

    I can save any TCP/IP traffic.

    So can anyone else.

    Why the masses think these thingies are "private" is beyond me ...

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      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Chris Miller

      Re: Whatever.

      Does that include on your Nokia 1610, jake? Oh, wait ...

      1. Captain Underpants

        Re: Whatever.

        Depends on how it's routing and whether he's running a packet sniffer hooked up to the right antenna, really...

        1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

          Re: Whatever.

          Just put a boundary network device with a sniffer, something like a Linux firewall. Allows you to record all IP traffic flowing through it using something like tcpdump. Doesn't need any antenna.

          I kept reminding my kids that I could, if I wanted, see the URL of all web pages they visited and a lot of their other traffic over the household LAN (can't do much about 3G, but that's another story). Made them much more 'net aware. I know that they could obscure the data using encryption or a VPN, but this would actually achieve part of what I want them to do, and that is to understand what it is to be on-line safely.

          For the record, although a lot of the URL and connection data the data is kept on the Firewall for months, I've never felt it necessary to snoop on them (although I have used the data to prove I could, and also to resolve bandwidth contention between them). It's amazing what being open about what you could do can achieve, without actually doing it.

          1. NumptyScrub

            Re: Whatever.

            quote: "(can't do much about 3G, but that's another story)"

            Setup a femtocell for the relevant network(s) in the house routed through your firewall; I suspect that you'd need further messing around in order to make sense of the data (if it is not encrypted it bloody should be), but it would technically be capturing UMTS traffic from devices and routing it through your gateway ready for logging and analysis.

            Whether you can actually be bothered is of course a whole different story, and of course it's only governments and TLAs that believe they have the right to do that to citizens with impunity. YMMV ;)

    3. W.O.Frobozz

      Re: Whatever.

      BUT ZUCKERBERG switched everything to HTTPS he was gonna PROTECT us...

      1. Euripides Pants

        Re: Whatever.

        Who is this Butt Zuckerberg you speak of?

  3. Rich 2 Silver badge

    Ill?

    "Snap save is going to ruin a lot of girls lives"

    ...because "a lot of girls" have some mental problem that forces them to send pics of their tits to all their friends??

    I'm just trying to understand, but I'm struggling.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Himalayaman
    Holmes

    Did people really expect Snapchat to work like that for very long? There is no way that transmitted bits/bytes cannot be intercepted and saved.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    gives a whole new meaning...

    to a network Packet Sniffer :o

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    the words "Rats", "Arse", "Coundn't" and "Give" will appear shortly in a comment.

  8. mark l 2 Silver badge

    Even before snapsave none technical people could simply just take a photo of whatever was on their phone with a digital camera if they wanted to save an image sent to them.

    The safest way is just don't send photos in the first place if you don't want to risk people saving them

  9. Gerardo McFitzpatrick-O'Toole

    Those selfies want to be free

    When people approach mobile computing as though it's Consumer Electronics (which it never really is, in the right hands), it's no wonder that they're naive to the claims of Snapchat and the like. Eventually, they will learn that data is only likely to respect their wishes with regards to privacy in a very limited, legally-defined set of circumstances.

  10. Shades

    Apps that save SnapChat images have been out almost as long as SnapChat has... on Android. Why the "sudden" mention of this now its on the worlds second most popular phone?

  11. vilemeister

    I will oblige a former commentard - I couldn't give a rats arse. If people trust the people who make snapchat to do it properly with encryption or god forbid actually deleting images when they actually have been viewed, they should trust them when it goes wrong.

    Sheep 1, meet sheep 2. Idiots.

  12. Number6

    It's simple: if you don't want it on the internet then don't let other people get access to it. If you don't send a picture or email then people can't forward it. It all comes down to "think before you send", and if necessary hit the 'delete' button instead.

    On the other side of the coin, if we get a generation where everyone has naked pictures of themselves floating around the internet then perhaps we won't get quite so hung up about nudity and it'll lose the power to embarrass people simply because everyone does it.

    1. Tim Jenkins

      "if we get a generation where everyone has naked pictures of themselves floating around the internet then perhaps we won't get quite so hung up about nudity"

      except that quite a lot of that generation are under 16 when they take those pictures, which potentially makes the 'producers and distributors' and anyone 'in possession' of them guilty of very serious offences...

  13. HamsterNet

    Diddums

    Seems like a lots of commentators have sour grapes over nobody willing to send them suggestive pictures.

    1. W.O.Frobozz

      Re: Diddums

      No, but some of us have daughters infected with the idiotic "selfies" disease. And maybe we give a shit enough to prevent them from doing something they will regret for a very long time.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ... raising the possibility that an impetuously-sent sext could be stored, distributed and then hang around on the internet forever.

    Buried somwhere in amongst the vast swathes of porn which fill the internet.

    Snap save is going to ruin a lot of girls lives

    — Mary ✌✌✨ (@MarySchlabach) August 9, 2013

    Which of course will be completely someone elses fault, and nothing whatsoever to do with them taking and sending the bloody pictures in the first place.

    1. Jediben
      FAIL

      More feminist bias

      Why is it going to ruin girls' lives and not boys' huh? You don't think the world knowing I had a peanut dick isn't going to harm my reputation as a stud muffin?

      Or do you mean my Ferrari and my Rolex and my 12 acre homestead and my chain of gymnasiums are already giving it away so the photo will do nothing?

      1. Jediben

        Re: More feminist bias

        Oops I double negatived and changed tense. Never mind Here's a picture of my willy to distract you. After all, it's far more important that you know what my bits look like rather than what I do or act like in life.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mr_peanut.png

  15. mIRCat
    Paris Hilton

    I feel...

    There's room for an obligatory "pics or it didn't happen."

  16. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Old, sage advice

    Don't put anything on the Internet you wouldn't put on the back (or front) of a postcard.

    1. DrGoon
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Old, sage advice

      Don't put anything on the Internet that you wouldn't like domestic and foreign intelligence services collecting, sending to the special operations department of any other agency or company that they like and then deliberately conflating into some supposed crime or media sanctioned taboo in order to repress you societally.

  17. Maharg
    Coat

    what ever happened ...

    Damn modern technology, what ever happened to good old fashioned flashing?

    I’ll get my (trench) coat…

  18. Vociferous

    I thought all these years on the internet had made me cynical, but clearly I'm still innocent at heart: not until now have I understood why people at all use SnapChat.

    Is it the same with Instagram? Twitter? That would make their unexplicable popularity suddenly a lot more explicable.

  19. Robin Bradshaw

    Meh

    You seen one fanny, you seen 'em all

    1. Cliff

      Re: Meh

      Yet somehow I feel compulsed to see them all. Boobs have a similar distracting effect.

      I must be the only one.

      1. Lamont Cranston

        Re: Meh

        To quote my old French teacher, upon pausing a video, and inadvertantly giving the class a wobbly view of one, out of focus, mammary: "Eh, once you've seen one, you've seen them both."

  20. Don Jefe

    Trust

    The person you sent this Snap to has saved a screenshot'

    - I know you saved a copy of that picture. The app told me you did. Delete it right now.

    : OK. I deleted it....

    There's always going to be a trust loop that can easily be broken if you're sending pics of your bits around. If you don't trust that person enough to let them determine what happens with those pics don't send them.

    Peer pressure is something you're going to have to learn to deal with, might as well start dealing with it now.

  21. Jediben
    Joke

    I make sure that my daughters don't take any tasteless pictures on their phones and send them to their schoolmates; we use the studio in the basement instead.

  22. Martin S

    Why have an app

    Take a screenshot, it's hardly rocket science.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why have an app

      Clearly someone didn't RTFA

      1. Tom Reg

        Re: Why have an app

        ios 7 will not notify if there has been a screenshot. So that feature of snapchat is done.

  23. Risky
    Alert

    NY

    Young ladies should be warnedd that such activity may bring them into contact with highly unsavoury characters. Such as candidates for public office...............

  24. MacGyver

    Just assume that anyone and everyone can see and save everything at all times and you'll be just fine.

  25. JayTee

    I for one...

    ...am proud to have my cock photos on the internet. Bring it on.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pictures of genitalia don't hurt anyone's reputation

    It's pictures of genitalia plus a face that are potentially embarrassing for the owner of the face.

    Though you can always claim it was photoshopped ... (GIMPed?)

  27. teebie

    Simple fix

    If you don't want this sort of thing to affect you, don't run for Mayor of New York

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    We live in an age where it's easier to get a tattoo removed than all copies of a digital image deleted. Maybe we could have an ad campaign run alongside the drink driving one. There seem to be enough reason to warrant the need to spoon feed this additional bit of common sense.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How about a little self-restraint?

    I like the comment about how Snap Save is going to ruin the lives of a lot of girs, when the real issue is the judgement of those aforementioned persons.

    The golden rule of social media is:

    "Never post anything that you wouldn't want seen by everyone in your family or during a job interview!"

  30. W.O.Frobozz

    "Ruin a lot of girls lives..." Maybe "girls" should have a little more sense than to put up naked pictures of themselves on an immortal medium like the Internet? Seriously...no sympathy. The mass narcissistic psychosis infecting females called "selfies" is a recipe for disaster.

  31. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Coat

    Where's Dave ?

    Surely this is something self-styled internet protector of children, one right honourable (well, he's a right something) David Cameron should be addressing with some sage announcement ?

    1. Daniel B.

      Re: Where's Dave ?

      Don't give him ideas!

  32. Old Handle

    Don't blame the users

    not too much, at least.

    Many of the comments here seem ignorant of what Snapchat is, talking about "posting" and "social media", and as a result are being unfair to the people who have used it, I think. Snapchat is supposed to be an instant messaging app for sharing pictures privately with one or more users on the other end in real time. It even uses encryption, and comes with the additional assurance that even the recipient can only see but not save the picture (a type of DRM).

    Trouble is almost all of that is based on a false sense of security. The encryption is badly done and even without special software, there's nothing to stop the recipient from screenshoting the app, although it will try to notify the sender if that happens (not sure how that helps much). It's easy for people like us to say "You should have known that wouldn't work." But unfortunately most people, teens or otherwise, don't have the technical understanding to instantly see all the problems with this system.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I couldn't figure out why someone was complaining that it "shouldn't be allowed in the store" and then I realized this is about an iPhone app, not a real app.

    Is this new for Apple snapchat users? Do they not know that Android has had this for a while?

  34. Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    I see a market for my new app

    SecureSnapChat - not only does it prevent the recipient taking a screenshot, but it he tries to use another camera to take a picture of the screen, it shoots him. (I know the technology exists, Thunderbird 1 had it over 40 years ago)

  35. Inachu

    somethinglie this

    Reminds me of a company that boasted that users were unable to copy their picture off the internet.

    I was able to copy their picture by opening notepad thus making the notepad app retain focus over the web browser then I made them show dide by side. my notepad on the right and the wbsite with image I was going to copy. notepad still retained focus then I hit printscreen(Prtscn) Then pasted the results to paint brush.

    Ahhhh bypass complete making the website claim pure rubbish.

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