SnapChat

SnapChat is either your favourite app or your worst enemy... depending on how fast your friend can screenshot or how much alcohol you've consumed in one night.

Personally, I love the app. It's an excuse for me to shamelessly take selfies and practice my "ugly face" that people like Beyonce do so well.

It makes me smile more often than not to get a quick message from a friend with a caption about their day, or maybe a joke. They probably made a stupid face at their phone and I'll publicly humiliate myself to return the favour.

Used in this innocent nature of sending quick messages with a goofy face and maybe a doodle, SnapChat is exactly that; innocent. However the app was actually designed in order to send nudes pictures to other people without them being able to save or post them anywhere. This is why the app deletes the pictures once they have been opened and only allows you to look at them for a short, allotted amount of time.

For each picture, you can adjust the time that the picture is displayed from one to ten seconds in order to control a person's ability to take a screen shot of the picture. Obviously this app is not always successful in preventing the receiver from saving the picture you sent them; it is only the app that is deleting the picture.

As I said before, the app is innocent as long as you use it innocently, however teenagers have been charged with distributing child pornography by posting nude pictures sent to them on Instagram and police have needed to get involved.

There are also other interesting legal matters surrounding SnapChat, such as Reggie Brown who claims to be co-founder of SnapChat along with Bobby Murphy and Brown's best friend (or maybe not anymore) from college, Evan Spiegel. Awkward, right? Things like that happen when you develop an app worth around $70 million.

If you've ever watched The Social Network, you can appreciate why friendships start to deteriorate over these sorts of things.

For a more in depth explanation of Brown's lawsuit against SnapChat, and Murphy and Spiegel, TechCrunch offers a great breakdown.

SnapChat also plans on adding some advertising to their app which can present some prospective problems if you're being encouraged to "Meet Hot Singles In Your Area!" on your sexting app...

I don't think that it comes as a surprise to anyone that they don't advertise the app as a tool to sext, but rather as a tool of good fun.

I don't want to sound like your mother and lecture you about being careful what you send people or post online, because you have probably heard it before. But I will leave you with this Forbes article on why you should try to avoid sending pictures of yourself scantily clad or less.