I'm a bit amused by this Snapchat debacle. As the author of a competing app (released slightly after Snapchat), I realized very early on in the design that saving the image to local storage would be a bad idea. With Privy, the downloaded image is only ever kept in RAM.

That said, I don't really get the media frenzy over the thought that recipients may be able to retrieve the image. Of course they can, they could just snap a pic of it with their digital camera. The point of apps like Snapchat and Privy was never that you can send images to people you don't trust. It's that you don't have to worry about the recipients accidentally leaving your images laying around. The fact of the matter is that there will never be a way to deliver confidential data to people you can't trust.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appidio.pr... [This would be a shameless plug if I had not long ago conceded that Snapchat has won.]