Tag: Snapchat

Popular app files two trademarks that could dictate its future

Massively popular mobile photo-sharing application Snapchat may be looking to solidify its future as a relevant application by embracing mobile payments. The app has become widely popular among a large demographic, but its uses are somewhat limited. It exists as a photo and video-sharing platform, through which users can share snippets of their lives with those on their contact lists. Typically, the pictures and videos shared through the app have a very short lifespan, with some lasting only seconds before being lost forever.

Trademarks highlight mobile commerce services

Snapchat has filed two trademarks that highlight its interest in the field of mobile commerce. The trademarks suggest that the company is interested in accepting, processing, and transferring payments among its users. One of the trademarks refers to computer application software that is responsible for handling electronic payments. The trademark suggests that this software can be downloaded from a global network, allowing it to be accessed by potentially millions of users. The second trademark filed by Snapchat involves the electronic transfer of money to others. This would involve the transfer of funds from various sources, including mobile devices.

Snapchat may be able to find enduring success by engaging in mobile commerce

Snapchat has not yet revealed how it intends to implement these new trademarks, but a focus on mobile commerce could help the company establish lasting relevance among its users. Snapchat is not the first photo-sharing application and it will not be the last. Many of its predecessors have faded into obscurity because they had little in the way of versatility. Apps that offer more than just a single, relatively simple feature have the potential to remain relevant among consumers that are generally quite fickle about the apps that they use.

Snapchat has limited experience in mobile payments

The demand for mobile commerce is on the rise. Consumers want to make use of new services that allow them to manage, transfer, and use their funds at their discretion. Snapchat may not have extensive experience with mobile commerce, but it does have access to a massive consumer base that may respond well to whatever efforts it ends up making in the mobile payments field.

Experts are saying that the popular photo sharing app is experiencing a lacking in privacy protection.

According to the complaints of a number of experts regarding the Snapchat app, the level of mobile security behind the application is greatly inadequate for protecting the privacy of its users.

Some now feel that the mobile app development team behind the app lacks the necessary understanding.

Among the most recent steps that the company has taken toward improving mobile security includes last week’s introduction of a CAPTCHA code verification. This is designed to help to ensure that all new subscribers are humans and not computer programs. It is important to avoid computer created accounts as these are common methods used by cybercriminals for the distribution of spam or to discover ways to grab personal information from other users of these types of mobile apps.

While the number of fake accounts may be reduced, it doesn’t mean that the mobile security is strong.

Although the CAPTCHA techniques can shrink the number of fake accounts that a service experiences, a graduate research assistant from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Steven Hickson, was able to easily hack into Snapchat despite its latest upgrades.

The CAPTCHA implementation at Snapchat was weak to the point that Hickson required under an hour on the mobile development of a computer program that would be able to trick the system with “100 percent accuracy”. Hickson explained that “They’re a very, very new company and I think they’re just lacking the personnel to do this kind of thing.”

In order to make sure that the potential user of the service is a human, the system selected by Snapchat involves having to choose the white ghost mascot of the company from among nine illustrations. Unfortunately, only the size and angle of the correct image is altered, making it simple for a computer to be able to recognize.

In order to stop a CAPTCHA mobile security system from being hacked, Hickson explained that “you want something that has a lot of variety in the answer,” adding that you essentially want one correct answer, but a vast array of different incorrect answers. This needs to be too complex for a computer to be able to solve while being quite obvious to a human.