Still in app mode following yesterday’s post on Aviate and with Las Vegas’s CES still in full force, it’s interesting to hear that tech companies are pitching apps that provide untraceable message delivery. These are designed for corporate users that want a higher level of security than Snapchat offers. The latest offering is Confide, a text-based iOS app released this week by former AOL executive Jon Brod and Howard Lerman, chief executive officer of location-services company Yext.

Confide is aimed at professionals who want to speak openly about delicate personnel or legal matters without leaving a trail of evidence that exposes confidential information. Think about the times when someone sends a memo that says, ‘Confidential, do not forward,’ or when someone asks for your personal e-mail to go off the company’s network or when it’s something you’d rather talk about on the phone or face to face, but don’t have time – that’s where Confide comes in.

There is, however, still one potential problem. Companies face heavy regulatory pressure to preserve and not destroy business e-mails, financial records, and other documents. In business, there still needs to be some kind of audit trail and accountability. For instance, last month, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Barclays $3.75 million for its decade-long failure to retain certain electronic records, e-mails, and instant messages. If employees are discussing critical information or creating financial records, they should most probably be retained.

Confide could also face a much higher barrier to entry if Snapchat were to market itself more aggressively to business users. As the app has just been launched it is as yet unclear whether business people will commit to using such a service, but Brod and Lerman point to the success of Facebook’s corporate ‘copycats’ such as LinkedIn. The founders remain convinced that it’s incredibly important, like in the offline world, to provide the option of impermanence online.

Is this clever app a success in the making? Drop us a line and we’ll ‘confide’ in you!’