Without a Trace

There comes a time in the life cycle of every celebrity scandal when outrage and finger-pointing metamorphose into pity and averting of the eyes. In the Tiger Woods debacle, that point was reached around the end of February, when the world first learned about TigerText. The golfer had become so synonymous with spousal betrayal, it seemed, that someone named a cheating aid after him.

(See a brief history of the Tiger Woods scandal.)

TigerText is a smart-phone application that allows its users to exchange text messages that disappear after a set period. A famous golfer could, for example, send a salacious TigerText to a woman who is not his wife, and the text would live for only as long as he specifies. When that time elapses — after anywhere from one minute to five days — the message disintegrates. It’s gone from her phone, his phone and, according to the app’s makers, any and all computer servers. She cannot forward it, she cannot store it, and unless she snaps a photo of it, she cannot hand it over to a tabloid for an undisclosed sum. There’s even a “delete on read” setting that counts down from 59 seconds after a message is opened and erases the text at zero.

TigerText arrived too late to avert disaster for Woods, but when the public got wind of it, the iPhone app went viral. It was reportedly downloaded 100,000 times in the first week. At the height of the media frenzy, it was the third most popular utility app on the iTunes website. Is there really that big a demand for a cheating amenity? Or is TigerText serving other needs?

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The application’s developers say they were taken aback by the fuss — and the Jay Leno jokes — the app generated. Not so stunned that they couldn’t fast-track the BlackBerry and Android versions, of course. But company execs insist TigerText was not created with philanderers in mind; they say the name was chosen to invoke tigers’ stealth, before the Woods brouhaha.

“Our real concern was privacy,” says TigerText founder Jeffrey Evans, who got the idea while working as a job-placement specialist in California. “People text like they talk. And some of the things they say, taken out of context, can come back to haunt them.” He notes that there are myriad nonscandalous reasons people might not want their texts around forever — for example, if they’re interviewing for a job while employed elsewhere, or discussing a business deal.

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The app could be a godsend in oppressive regimes, in which activists’ phones are often seized or their phone histories examined. That’s what interests Katrin Verclas, director of Mobile Active, an organization that uses mobile technology to effect social change. “This would be a way to do political organizing more safely and securely,” she says.

But what of those who want stealth because they are trying to do harm? Is TigerText a new threat to national security? Not according to retired major general Dale Meyerrose, a former CIO for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and now the head of cybersecurity at tech firm Harris Corp. “Extremists and terrorists are very tech savvy,” he says. “This is not a game changer. It just might make divorce lawyers’ jobs harder.”

Evans acknowledges that people who have something to hide might find it easier to do so with his app. But he points to a recent case in Massachusetts in which an eighth-grader sent a boy risqué photos, which he then sold to school friends for $5 each; now both are facing possible child-pornography charges. “Teenagers make mistakes. They should learn from them,” Evans says. “But those mistakes shouldn’t ruin their lives.” He’s hoping in the near future to add the ability to send self-destructing photos. The app preventing teen impulsivity might take a little longer.

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