Sender: “Hey, I know you’ve read my message, why aren’t you replying?”
You: “Typing… Typing…”
Most of us have been stuck in sticky situations like these and are no strangers to the need for privacy. Feeling pressurised to give a reply isn’t exactly pleasant. Ever wished you could just read messagess without senders being notified that the messages have been read? There’s a solution for this and it comes in the form of an app: Message Peeping Tom.
The brainchild of Taiwan’s Holiestep, Message Peeping Tom allows you to read messages from various chat messengers via the app directly, without the need to open each individually and leaving ‘read’ clues behind.
Instead of viewing your messages from your usual messaging apps, the message is sent to Message Peeping Tom and you read the message via that app instead. Therefore, the original app that received the message will not record your ‘reading’. This simple yet sneaky method to bypass the message in the original receiving app is perfect for avoiding people you may not wish to talk to at that certain point of time (though avoidance really isn’t the best solution for everything).
The app is only available for Android users and is able to procure your messages from Line, Facebook Messenger, Kakao Talk, Hike, Between, and China’s Momo.
Also see: Vulcan Post writers share their mobile homescreen and top 3 apps. Which do you like best?
Messenger Peeping Tom relies on ‘notifications’, so that feature needs to be turned on to allow the app to procure conversations from your messengers.
However, the app’s instructions are written in broken English, which isn’t so surprising since it’s a Taiwan-based app and English probably isn’t their first language. Even so, it isn’t very challenging to understand and follow the instructions given.
Mobile apps offered by other companies in this category works on single chat messenger apps; Yikes, which only grabs messengers from Snapchat; and Privy Chat, that grabs texts only from Facebook.
Amazingly, Messenger Peeping Tom is the first-of-its-kind app that grabs notifications from multiple chat messengers and lays them out neatly in an easy to navigate and intuitive user interface. Judging from the app’s ‘multi-tasking’ ability and nifty features, it wouldn’t be surprising to see their download count rise rapidly as it gains more traction among Android users.
One thing to worry about though is the privacy settings. Since all your chat messages are being sent to the app for you to read directly without having to go through LINE, Facebook Messenger, etc., users may have to be concerned about whether this app is collecting all of their private messages for their database.
Also read: Apps I Live By: TripAdvisor’s APAC Mobile Partnerships Director, Andreas Behrens
