Wickr App Hides Secret Messages Behind Cat Photos
Wickr app lets users "escape the Internet."
— -- It's the purr-fect cover.
You may soon be seeing more feline friends in your Facebook news feed.
The Wickr messaging app has come up with a way for users to send secret messages hidden in plain sight behind cat photos.
The Wickr Timed Feed -- that's WTF for short -- allows users to create a picture feed that expires in 24 hours. Friends can then be invited to browse the photos and rate them before they disappear forever.
As many as 151 Facebook friends can be invited to click through the feed, while other users will simply see a photo of a cute feline friend.
When a friend who has been authorized clicks on the photo, they'll be asked if they want to leave Facebook. If they agree, the Wickr app will open and only authorized friends will be able to browse the feed and rank the photos.
"Users fully own and control pictures shared through Wickr," founder Nico Sell said in a blog post, citing other services that have varying terms of service.
Everyone else just gets treated to a photo of a cute kitty -- a choice that Sell said was made because "cats go viral more frequently than any other animal on the Internet."
WTF is the latest offshoot of the encrypted messaging app, which provides encrypted messaging services for photos, audio files, videos, documents and photos.
The app is ad-free and promises it is completely anonymous, quickly deleting all metadata from its system and providing users a way to scrub their smartphones of deleted files.