New iPhone app allows users to control how long messages stay on their recipient's phone

It's a line that is synonymous with "Mission Impossible": this message will self-destruct in 5 seconds.  Now iPhone users can apply that theory to their texts and emails, without their phone blowing up.

Wickr is a new, free app that's now available in the Apple App store.  According to the Huffington Post, it allows a user to remain anonymous and decide who reads their messages, where they can read them and how long they can read them until they are permanently deleted.

While the app can make you feel like an undercover agent, it does serve a serious purpose.  Up until now, when you delete data from your phone, it's not gone forever.  It remains on your phone's internal memory that can be accessed by your phone company, or worse, hackers.

Robert Statcia, professor and co-founder of Wickr, tells the Huffington Post that his students were able to retrieve sensitive data from smartphones they bought on eBay.  "From credit cards to bank statements, you name it. We recovered everything," he told the Huff Post. "It's just like a hard drive on a computer. When you delete a file, it doesn't actually get deleted. Using forensic software you can recover files very easily."

Wickr can also be helpful for doctors, lawyers, or anyone who is concerned about keeping confidential information private. 

But the app is not completely fool-proof.  The New York Times says that the recipient of your message could still take a screenshot of what was sent and save it before the message is deleted.