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Can someone explain to me how Snapchat photos are considered ephemeral? Anyone can capture data at the endpoint and persist it. E.g. I can take a screenshot of a photo sent to me, and it will be in my iPhoto archive forever. I can share it from there to my entire contact list.

What am I missing? Please educate me.

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It tells the sender if you screenshot. It's not enough to prevent it from happening, but it adds a pretty big social incentive not to do so.

How reliable is that? I can't imagine the snapchat app can know if some third party app grabs an image of the screen and does not notify it that a screenshot has been taken.

At the most basic level you can use one phone to take a photo of another phone. If the object is to expose an embarassing photo, that may be enough resolution to accomplish the end. I really think it is impossible to secure the data once it is on a client.

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