Secret

Secret

“This is the third girl I’ve dated in three weeks, and none of them know about each other.” “I’m late. I don’t know how to tell my husband. Especially since he had a vasectomy.”  “Is Lucy the cutest dog?” These are recent posts on the mobile confessional app Secret, posts which typically veer toward the salacious and should all have one thing in common: they’re anonymous and untraceable. Yet in the above three cases they weren’t. Security researchers Benjamin Caudill and Bryan Seely were able to identify the names of their friends behind the first two posts. They also learned that the third post about “Lucy” came from the founder of Secret, ex-Googler David Byttow. After months of research, Caudill and Seely figured out how to read what their contacts were posting on the app, which could mean insightful tidbits into relationship problems, emotional issues and workplace gossip.

Read the full story at Forbes.

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