[Stealth-]

I don't totally see the point to these arguments. The inherent nature of the technology we have means that if they can view it once, they can view it as long and as many times as they want. Anything trying to restrict that is just futile -- look at DRM.

Snapchat has never given that particular illusion of privacy. As the most common and basic example, it has absolutely no way of stopping people from simply taking a screenshot of your image. Snapchat is meant to be used to share throwaway photos without the social expectation that comes from putting it on somewhere like Facebook. Anyone who uses the application learns quickly that someone can potentially store the photo they sent -- in a vast variety of ways.

[eertami]

What the people who don't use Snapchat don't realize, is that you still have to trust someone if you're sending compromising photos. The benefit to Snapchat is that you don't have to worry about the recipients future negligence exposing them.

Snapchat is not a replacement for trust.

[gaius]

Actually it does attempt to do that - it requires you keep your finger on the screen while viewing so you can't perform whatever the screenshot command is. Which is lame but that's not the point - their selling point is that they do claim the images are transient. I'll wager 90% of their traffic is images people would not want made public, and some of it will be technically illegal.

[7952]

The benefit to the user is that it establishes a social convention. You are unambiguously asking your friend not to share something around. It provides enough technical protection to prevent people sharing in the heat of the moment. In that sense it is like a changing room curtain.

[girvo]

I would take that wager. It's far less focused on nudes and illegal stuff than you would think. Most of it is just silly dumb photos or those that don't warrant being shared forever.

[pbreit]

Not quite. The description on iTunes specifically notes that the receiver can take a screenshot: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapchat/id447188370?mt=8

[StavrosK]

What's the point of that? I just tried it, and I can take a screenshot fine with one finger on the screen.

[wlesieutre]

It used to be that taking a screenshot briefly stopped the touch event, so it could notify the sender when you took a screenshot.

iOS 7 fixed that bug, but added an official way for apps to detect screenshots. I would guess snapchat has just hung on to their old interface out of tradition, since it still works. It just doesn't have anything to do with screenshots anymore.

[StavrosK]

Ah, that makes sense, thank you.

[gaius]

The point of it is to reassure unsophisticated users.

[samolang]

It also attempts to notify the sender if the receiver takes a screenshot of the message.

[e12e]

> I don't totally see the point to these arguments.

Yes and no. The encryption key is fixed? Why not use a session key that is (nominally) ephemeral to the running snapchat process at least?

> if they can view it once

I have a camera and a phone. I can record anything displayed on my phone forever regardless of technology, and so can a three year old. Especially for "sensitive" snapchats, the "analog hole" (aka: a human has to be able to view it for it to be visual communication) renders all these ideas moot. It has absolutely nothing to do with "clever" drm-like hacks.

[simias]

I agree, I just hope the average snapchat user realizes that there's no guarantee the pictures they're sending can be archived forever (especially the younger users).

I never used the app though, and I just tried to go to their website to see how they communicate on this issue just to discover that snapchat.com doesn't contain a single description of the service. There's just a silly video on the frontpage (turtle fights? I'm not sure about the ethics of that) and links to download the app. It's crazy that something so new is already popular enough that they don't even need to explain what it is anymore.

That being said on both apple's and google's app stores the description of the app mentions that the user can make a screenshot and save the picture, so at least they don't try to hide this limitation.

[nodata]

Actually an Android app can disable screenshots, but your point still stands: there is nothing to stop someone taking a photo of the screen.

[Stealth-]

It can, but they explicitly choose not to in Snapchat, afaik.

[rmc]

It's supposed to be hard enough for 99.9999% of users.