Encrypted Messaging App Wickr Uses Cat Pics to Hide Privately Posted Facebook Photos

Encrypted messaging app Wickr has come up with a new way to share photos privately on Facebook.

The company has adopted a new feature that lets users post a photo to Facebook without directly sharing the photo. The photo will be hidden behind a picture of a cat and only users who are given permission to see the actual image will be able to do so from the Wickr app.

wickr

The integration with Facebook is a part of a new photo feed that Wickr is adding to its existing messaging app. The new photo feed is called the Wickr Timed Feed, which lets you post pictures in that live feed for 24 hours for up to 151 users.

In an interview, Wickr CEO Nico Sell told Recode:

“It took a lot longer to build this than we expected. However, this is a true technology breakthrough. You want to hide secrets in something that’s very common. We will have dogs, too, but we plan on that being an in-app purchase.”

Here is a demo of how the new service works:

YouTube video

It is still unclear what Facebook thinks of Wickr’s new feature. It will be very interesting to see how the social network responses, but it doesn’t appear to be a feature that Facebook would like because the new service redirects you out of the company’s app and into a third-party app in order to be able to view privately posted photos.

Wickr is available as a free download from the App Store. The app requires a device running iOS 7 or later and has been optimized for the iPhone 5, 6, and 6 Plus.

[via Recode]

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