A bit off-topic, but since I heard about Snapchat I've been wondering: Couldn't they almost guarantee* a self-destruct? Right now, they notify the sender if the receiver takes a screenshot right, but don't to anything to actually prevent that screenshot.
Can't they slice the image into many small parts, group them into N groups, then flash each group for 1/Nth of a second, essentially creating a looping video out of an image? A screenshot would then only take the current frame buffer, which would be only a part of the image and hopefully not useful. The image would have ghostly appearance, but it'd offer much better protection. OTOH, this sounds like an overly-complicated technical solution - after all notification only is much simpler and seem to offer a "good enough" solution.
*of course, it'd be very hard to protect anything when sending bits to someone else - someone can patch the app to get rid of the timer, dump the image to disk etc etc.
Asking this question in earnest. What other applications does one use this apart from sexting? I thought of it, even read articles that talk about how it changes how we communicate, etc. I just can't think of a use for this.
Comments
A bit off-topic, but since I heard about Snapchat I've been wondering: Couldn't they almost guarantee* a self-destruct? Right now, they notify the sender if the receiver takes a screenshot right, but don't to anything to actually prevent that screenshot.
Can't they slice the image into many small parts, group them into N groups, then flash each group for 1/Nth of a second, essentially creating a looping video out of an image? A screenshot would then only take the current frame buffer, which would be only a part of the image and hopefully not useful. The image would have ghostly appearance, but it'd offer much better protection. OTOH, this sounds like an overly-complicated technical solution - after all notification only is much simpler and seem to offer a "good enough" solution.
*of course, it'd be very hard to protect anything when sending bits to someone else - someone can patch the app to get rid of the timer, dump the image to disk etc etc.
POC: http://blog.persistent.info/2012/12/screenshot-proof-images-...
HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4955639
There's the same problem that every form of DRM has: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
Check this out --> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4955639
Any animation fast enough to look like a coherent image is easily captured by an external camera as a single image.
So it's not just about sexting, but communicating by sending pictures to another smartphone? What's next, short messages and duplex voice chat?
</sarcasm>
As somebody that tried to peddle a Snapchat competitor for Android (before Snapchat blew up), yes, it's pretty much just for sexting.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appidio.pr...
Asking this question in earnest. What other applications does one use this apart from sexting? I thought of it, even read articles that talk about how it changes how we communicate, etc. I just can't think of a use for this.