Viber offers the option to make photos and videos disappear once they have been viewed

It’s a very well-known fact that IM apps collect a lot of user data with time. This includes your texts, locations, photos, videos, and other crucial data. Since last few years, these apps have started offering end-to-end encryption service to help maintain privacy.

Viber, owned by Rakuten Inc., recently rolled out its “secret messages” feature to give users a stronger hold of their privacy. Using this feature, the users can select the photos and videos that they don’t mind keeping in chat archives before hitting send. Viber already allows the user to delete a conversation from theirs as well as recipient’s smartphones.

The new feature allows the user to set a time limit for the shared images that the user does not want to store in archives. With this, you can send a photo to your friend with a time limit of up to 10 seconds, post which the image will be invisible. Similarly, the videos can be set to be viewed only once after which they disappear from the conversation. The feature works with both individual and group chats.

Viber is now reported to have 800 million users. It competes with other popular chat apps including Whatsapp, Kakao Talk, Line, and Signal. Though likely to be welcomed by the users, this feature is not completely new. Similar features exist in Line and Kakao Talk.