Snapchat is stupid

Over a year ago I briefly had Snapchat on my phone  and here’s what I concluded before deleting it a day later: Snapchat is idiotic. It’s objectively a dumb thing, but a perfect example of how if an app developer kind of knows what they’re doing and develops an idea for an app that will–at the very least–function pretty well, they may have some success. Or even a huge hit, like Snapchat.

I admit, my thinking Snapchat is dumb may be an Old Fart Thing. I’m 46 now and have developed a few of those. But if you were sitting around 5 years ago, when smart phones with touch screens and apps like the iPhone were still fairly new, and someone said, “I know, a visual messaging app wherein the message vanishes in 10 seconds! Whaddya say?” wouldn’t you twist your lips into a furious snarl then preemptively beat the snot of the idea-haver to try and prevent them from ever sharing such idiocy with you again?

I would.

Doesn’t matter what I think about Snapchat, in the end, because it has been a hit. A lot of people have downloaded it and began immediately dispatching supposedly short-lived pics of their genitals and pets (hopefully never in the same shot) to friends and loved ones and generally having all sorts of dumb fun. I guess.

So of course it turns out the app is fucked. Those 10-second duration images are eminently and easily screengrabbable, for one thing. There have been a host of issues since the app’s debut that I could list. The worst, probably, is the most recent–the damned thing was pretty hackable, all along:

A site called SnapchatDB.info has saved usernames and phone numbers for 4.6 million accounts and made the information available for download. In a statement to us, SnapchatDB says that it got the information through a recently identified and patched Snapchat exploit and that it is making the data available in an effort to convince the messaging app to beef up its security.

If you’re concerned that your own info has been compromised because you have Snapchat (because the temptation to send short-lived shots of your junk or mutt was just too damned irresistible, admit it) you can search for info here, at Snapcheck.org.

Once you do, whether you find your info or not, delete the stupid thing (if you think about it, you could essentially use any other visually-oriented messaging app to do just as stupid stuff as you do on Snapchat) and go sit and think about your life. I mean, really.