The self-destructing message, whether a piece of paper that mystically disintegrates at the appropriate moment or the microfiche that goes up in a poof of smoke, is a staple of any spy movie and a childhood wish of my own. TigerText, a private SMS app, has made my childhood dream a reality.
The company, which has had a free app available, has brought this spy-novel feature to the enterprise with this week’s release of an enterprise app.
According to TechCrunch, the app lets users determine when and how the messages are deleted.
As we reported last year, TigerText’s mobile apps allows users to send text messages or photos that can then be deleted off both the sender’s and receiver’s phone after a selected period of time. Once a sender selects the message lifespan (from 1 minute up to 30 days), expired messages are not only deleted from both phones, but are not stored on any server and they cannot be retrieved once expired. Users can also select a “Delete on Read” option, which will delete the text 60 seconds after the recipient opens the message.
The latest version of the app caters to businesses by allowing users to perform a one-time login to authenticate with the company. TigerText describes the app as “a cross-platform collaboration tool for your organization that allows you to deploy your own private, secure mobile network where your employees can safely communicate on their existing mobile devices within your company.”
“Text messaging, just like email, can be used against your organization,” writes the company on its website. “If the messages no longer exist, there is no risk of data breach or exposure.”
The app is available on iOS, Android and Blackberry platforms and administrators can manage user settings from the Web. It enters an increasingly crowded space, with apps like Kik, Beluga and GroupMe entering the free message game, but this one has that special spin for the security-minded.
From what we can tell, however, the app is missing one huge feature – the little whisp of smoke, wafting out the crack of your phone case whenever a message is deleted.
