
Ask HN: Snapchat for documents? - saimiam
FD: this is part tongue in cheek, part market research.<p>The other day, I had to hire someone to do some writeups for me. They generously provided me final samples on the subject under discussion. It got me thinking that I could have taken their samples, told them I hated their work, edited it a little, and passed it off as my own.<p>That&#x27;s when the thought came to me that maybe there&#x27;s a market for documents which disappear after the first viewing from the receiver&#x27;s device - a Snapchat for documents.<p>Use cases:<p>1. Play memory games or tests<p>2. If you want to send a VC your pitch deck but you don&#x27;t want them to forward it to a company in their portfolio.<p>3. You may want to share some medical records with a remote friend or family but not let it linger on their device.<p>4. Share a treasure map with a fellow adventurer to convince them that you&#x27;re legit and X does mark the spot.<p>5. Share a screenplay with Harvey Weinstein remotely because you don&#x27;t want to have sex with him (sorry, this is a topical reference in case you&#x27;re not in the United States right now.)<p>6. Share a sneak peek of financial data to reporters do that they can write glowing reports about your business acumen<p>7. Prove to Glenn Greenwald that you actually have real NSA documents<p>What does HN think? Should I drop everything, do this full time, and go from 0 to distinctly non-Thielian 0.05?
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sarcasmic
The Verge: "Mozilla's Send is basically the Snapchat of file sharing" [1]

Engadget: "Mozilla file sharing test wipes files after one download" [2]

Firefox Send [3]; about page [4]

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16086272/mozilla-send-
file...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16086272/mozilla-send-file-sharing-
service-launches)

[2] [https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/mozilla-send-file-
sharin...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/mozilla-send-file-sharing/)

[3] [https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/)

[4]
[https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/send](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/send)

~~~
saimiam
Send is ortho to what I had in mind. Downloading the file expires the link (
_oh, this is what the other commenter was saying_ ) but leaves a copy with the
receiver.

------
andreareina
What's your threat model?

You can't counter someone who wants to store the document -- just take a video
of the device.

So what you _can_ do is prevent _accidental_ saving, and keep honest people
honest. For this, an expiring link will suffice for text, and other formats
can be supported using e.g. data URIs (content isn't cached on-disk AFAIK,
unless paged out), serving PDFs as images, etc.

~~~
saimiam
If they take a screenshot or video, maybe I can report the action back to
sender notifying them that the receiver is not trustworthy. I'm told Snapchat
does this for screenshots.

I'll look up expiring links but do they need people to upload content to a
server first before generating an expiring link?

Threat model - none as such. For a person who makes a living writing blogs for
others, their threat model is plagiarism. For a startup sharing trade secrets
with a VC, the model is violation of NDA and so on.

E1: never mind about expiring links. I figured out what they are from the
other comment. You mean Send, right?

