Governor Chris Christie

By David Shankbone (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Imagine if New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and his staff had a way to send emails that self-destructed, similar to what the popular Snapchat does with videos and photos.

Well now there’s an app for that. It’s called Confide, and it’s trying to become popular with companies. It allows iPhone users (they’re also developing it for Android) to create text messages that disappear. When someone receives a message, he or she “wands” over the words with a finger to read them, and then they’re deleted. The company promises the messages are truly gone because it’s all encrypted, and no one even there has the ability to decrypt them. And no one can take a screen shot either. If the recipient tries to take a screen shot, an alert is issued. Also, only one word at a time can be revealed when it’s “wanded” over, which makes screen shots difficult.

It can be handy for people who want to have off-the-record conversations or share confidential information. Also, as the co-founders of the company discovered, it’s useful when people are too busy to call each other or can’t have private in-person meetings.

There are some problems, though, as Sarah Frier in Bloomberg Businessweek points out. One is auditing. If a company is involved in a legal dispute or is being questioned by a regulatory agency, it will need some kind of paper/email trail or documentation. If something crucial was concealed through this self-destructing app, it can raise questions and even cause violations. It would also make the company look shady.

Then again, as Christie is being questioned and his staff is being subpoenaed, their reactions and plans could’ve taken place privately instead of in emails that stayed on servers even if they were deleted. Not that companies should aspire to crafting devious plans of payback, but they might want an option to have a process that’s less formal, where spontaneous discussions can take place that don’t require a boardroom.