For those unfamiliar, Snapchat is an app for iOS and Android that lets users send each other text messages, pictures and videos, and while it seems like an ordinary instant messaging app, the twist is that you can set the duration of how long a video or photo sent will exist before being deleted. This is a great way to share photos or videos which you might only want to share in the moment and don’t want to leave a trace at the end of the day, however that might not be the case as according to Buzzfeed, they have discovered a bug within the iOS version of Snapchat that allows a user to access supposedly deleted photos or videos.
This was discovered by connecting the iOS device to the computer and using a file browsing computer program where it was discovered that Snapchat actually kept copies of videos that were supposed to be deleted. At the moment this appears to be related to videos only as the video feature was introduced on the 14th of December. It seems that this problem also affects Facebook’s Poke app where the videos are actually found to be stored on folders called “tmp” for Snapchat, and “mediacard” for the Poke app.
It is unclear if the Android version is affected similarly, and while Facebook has yet to comment on the issue, Snapchat’s founder Evan Spiegel said that those who enjoy the service of Snapchat probably would not go to such lengths to recover deleted videos. For those who use Snapchat and Poke to send harmless videos to friends or family, we suspect that this might not be a huge deal, but for those who use it for, well, adult purposes, this is definitely something worth keeping in mind.