DSTRUX – Control what you share.

College can be a time for new experiences and making choices that affect us for the rest of our lives. While some of those decisions are good, some can also be very bad. A common bad decision that college students make is regarding posting something to social media that can portray them in a negative light. Posts of this nature can shape the way people see you, especially when a student begins their job search after college.

Since our lives are so connected, it is important to note that simply staying off social media is essentially out of the question for most people of our generation. Social media companies have taken note of the concept of its users not wanting to keep their data on the Internet forever. The best example of this is in the social media app Snapchat, where users can send pictures to one another and then it disappears after a maximum of 10 seconds or 24 hours if added to that user’s Snapchat story. Another company has taken this idea and furthered its functionality in the form of DSTRUX.

DSTRUX aims to give its users more control over the information that they share to the Internet. Released in April 2014, DSTRUX is a web-platform that lets users set a timer for long the file will be available to anyone. When the time runs out, the file will self-destruct. To use DSTRUX, a user can just upload any file they want and select the users they want to send it to via email or social media. The user is given a URL that navigates to where the information is stored on the servers of DSTRUX. Once a file is deleted or terminated from the service, the file deletes any trace that the file was sent.

In August 2014, DSTRUX released an iOS app for their service. The iOS version allows users to share data like the web app but also lets users give permission for the recipient of the file to share the file with others or not. At any point, the user can terminate anyone from having access to the file.

One feature that is unique to the iOS version is that it has technology built into it that protects against people taking screenshots of the data. It blurs out the information if a screen capture is taken and the recipient is kicked out of the file. In addition to guarding against screenshots, DSTRUX also does not allow any recipients to print the items that they have received and does not allow the recipients to save the item to their local storage or to a cloud service.

Snapchat and other privacy-based messaging services made the self-destructing concept popular; however, DSTRUX is one of the first to take the extra step against the perpetuity of the data by protecting against screenshots. While most of these privacy-based messaging services are geared towards a younger demographic, it appears as if DSTRUX is directed towards a professional environment by increasing the types of files that can be shared and the increased protection in the data of the user.

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