Tiger Text: Not Just for Cheaters!

Tiger Text has been making waves in the media for the past few days. Tiger Text is an iPhone (and soon BlackBerry and Android) app that allows the user to send a time sensitive text message to another person who has the app. The text is deleted either immediately upon reading, or after a set amount of time.

The joke that the media outlets have been applying to the app is of course apparent in the name. "OMG Tiger Woods cheated on his wife! He's a cheater! You can be a cheater with Tiger Text." Sure, you could use it that way, provided the other party had the app too, and neither one of you wanted the affair to see the light of day. Slightly impractical, and really only applicable to long term affairs, instead of one night stands.

A much more effective and useful application of this app (for some at least) is the drug trade. Dealers could message each other for re-ups, and could message their customers for sales. Drug dealers, rest assured that no one can snitch on you, at least not via cell phone evidence, because the messages you sent are all deleted from the other person's phone. Feds subpoena the phone company? No worries. The messages never go through the cell company's system and are constantly deleted from X Sigma's (creator of Tiger Text) servers.

Maybe I've been watching too much of HBO's The Wire, where the dealers are always one step ahead of the cops. In the show, the street dealers use low tech methods like beepers, payphones and burners-- disposable cell phones that are used for a week and swapped out for a new one before they can be traced or tapped. New technology makes this possible in cheaper and more convenient ways. No more looking for public payphones or making trips to the store to buy burners. Now just send X Sigma a few dollars via Paypal and you're on your way to becoming a kingpin.