Let’s not beat around the bush here: Snapchat has built a social media empire on discreet raunchiness. Even if it is, shockingly, the best social media platform for fact-checked news, most people use its self-destructing photos to send intimate photos of each other they know will be deleted, and the app will alert them to screenshots. Except, it turns out, unless iOS 11 is involved.
Mic’s tech team, while fooling around with iOS 11’s developer beta, stumbled over an unfortunate end-run around Snapchat’s privacy features. iOS 11 allows simple recording of what’s going on in your phone as a video file, it turns out. All you need to do is enable that, hit record, and your phone will tape what’s unfolding on Snapchat without letting the other party know. It’s not clear, at the moment, whether this is a deliberate work-around to Snapchat’s features or if Apple simply didn’t consider the implications of their function.
The good news is that since iOS 11 is in developer beta, and won’t officially hit phones until the fall, both Apple and Snapchat have plenty of time to fix this problem and restore a little privacy for its users. In the meantime, however, if you’re snapping with somebody who uses an iPhone, maybe keep it chaste until there’s a fix out there.
(Via Mic)