Has Sexting Just Been Made Safer?
June 29, 2015
Sometimes there is nothing quite as thrilling and exciting as sending a naughty nude pic to your partner to tease them and make them want to fuck you.
Their response is usually to send a picture back, and you can use that to fuel your dirty fantasies of bending them over your desk and fucking them hard. However, lately that has begun to change.
We’re becoming more and more worried about our perfectly innocent sexts being used against us, and while the law has now changed to mean that those sharing the “private sexual photograph or film” of someone else without their consent will not face charges, it doesn’t stop them from risking it.
However, it seems that sexting might now becoming a lot safer, meaning you will soon be able to send those saucy snaps without worrying about what might happen to them.
Revenge Porn
It used to be that sharing those dirty sexts and nude pictures made you an asshole. Yes, a painful breakup might make you want to take revenge on someone, but putting the hot porno you made with them on the internet isn’t the way to do it.
However, the victims of this revenge porn, as it quickly became known, weren’t happy. After all, family, friends, and colleagues would see the images, and that could not only get you fired from work but it could change how people think about you.
That’s not exactly fair when all you wanted to do was turn your partner at the time on by sending some naughty texts and a sexy video.
However, a new law came into effect in April, meaning that those who share sexually explicit images without first having the consent of the subject could be in trouble, and might even face a spell in jail.
Rightly deserved? We think so! Victims are often left feeling “violated and ashamed”. After all, you’ve sent the person this picture for their benefit only, not for them to share with others. It is private, and if they break that privacy you tend to feel like you don’t want to share any of them ever again.
Media sharing apps
It used to be that, if someone wanted to send you a sexy pic, they’d just send it. Then apps like Snapchat came about, where users could send their hot snaps to friends and add a time limiting, meaning you could only look at the picture for a short time before it would disappear from the screen forever.
Of course, phones are able to screenshot content, meaning you can take your own picture of what is on the screen. Many of the Snapchat users would do this to save the images they were sent, and while Snapchat would let the sender know a screenshot had been taken, there wasn’t much you could do about it then.
Even with their little warning to others about it, people have found ways around it. There are now apps you can download to save your snaps, without letting the other user know that you have saved it.
As a result, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a report in May of 2014, and it was their fourth annual “Who Has Your Back” report. In it they revealed that Snapchat actually had the lowest ratings of all, and was the only company to receive just one star for its security.
It is definitely not what you want to hear about the app you use to send sexy pictures to others!
Safer sexting
Many see the sending of nudes as the problem here, but there are some out there who release that sexting itself isn’t going anywhere, and the best way to combat revenge porn is by making sexting safer.
A new app has been created “to allow the safe sharing of nudes”, and surprisingly, the creators are two fathers based in the city of Perth in Australia. The app is called HotShots and, unlike Snapchat, the pictures sent through it “cannot be screenshot, saved or forwarded, and the app’s servers are wiped daily to avoid being targeted by hackers.”
Unlike Snapchat and other image sharing apps, HotShots works by showing the receiver a brief view of the image, although this image they see has been distorted a little. They can’t view the full and clear image unless they correctly answer a secret question that has been posed by the sender.
It sounds like a great idea, and they believe that “this app is something that could help solve a big issue”, simply by making it hard to save the images and by making the recipient confirm they know the person they are sexting.
Controversial
Of course, there are many out there who think that this app is a bad idea. They believe that the best way to tackle revenge porn is to stop people sexting altogether. However, Mr Bell, one of the app’s creators, said that “it’s always something that has happened and always will happen, and if we can make it safe for people, then that’s more power to them.”
That said, Amanda Lambros, a clinical fellow of the Curtin University, has said that the internet is very complex and that, while HotShots seems to be a good deal safer than apps like Snapchat, “the only truly hack-proof way of revealing yourself to somebody was in the bedroom”.
While that is the case, the app is proving to be very popular on the Google Play store, where it is currently free to download. The demands for the app on Apple are growing too, and hopefully iPhone users will be able to get it at the end of July.
Are you a regular when it comes to sexting, or do you prefer to keep things in the bedroom? You can let us know by leaving a comment in the box below.
Since then she has gained a fine reputation with her blogs on sex advice, sexual health and amusing news stories from around the globe. She is also a campaigner for the rights of sex workers from all over the world.
In her spare time, Lara keeps herself active by going running, and is something of a film buff. She also loves to go travelling.
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