In You season 4 part 1, Joe’s stalker contacts him through a highly-secured app that allows them to erase any evidence of them ever talking to Joe.
Joe is invited to Adam Pratt’s Sundry House, the most exclusive club in Soho, by his neighbor and colleague, Malcolm Harding. During his time there, Joe gets familiar with Malcolm’s friends, who are some of London’s most fortunate ones.
During the party, Phoebe gets Joe drugged and drunk to the point where he has no sense of what he is doing, who he is talking to, and about what. Joe also loses his mobile phone for some time while he is with them.
The next day, he wakes up at his own house and remembers Malcolm dropping him home. Minutes later, he finds Malcolm’s body on his dinner table.
Joe deduces that he might have killed Malcolm because he criticized Marienne last night. He then decides to protect himself. He uses his skills to dispose of Malcolm’s body.
Later, he receives a text from an unknown number on an app called Evanesce, which he doesn’t remember installing, praising him for getting rid of Malcolm’s body quickly.
Evanesce app in You
Evanesce is a high-security chat app that erases everything you say. Joe can only view the message sent to him for a few seconds. After that, the message vanishes on its own.
Throughout the first part of You season 4, Evanesce ends up being the only source through which Joe talks to his stalker. They both try to understand each other. While this stalker encourages Joe to commit more murders, Joe resolves to find out who this person is.
Does an app like Evanesce exist in the real world?
Evanesce does not exist in any app store, but the high security and features provided by this app are available on some of the more popular apps, such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, Cover Me, and Confide.
The closest app to Evanesce is Confide, where messages disappear automatically 24 hours after being sent. The feature of ‘Confidential Mode’ in this app, if turned on, deletes messages right after they have been read. Confide also ensures that one cannot take a screenshot of the chat.
Confide aside, Snapchat has become more popular for having the feature of deleting messages and pictures right after they’ve been viewed, but users can easily screenshot them, which Confide doesn’t allow.
Almost every other app offers end-to-end encryption of chats. More common chatting apps, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, have also incorporated the disappearing messages feature.
In WhatsApp, users can set a timer for when they want to get rid of the messages once the ‘Disappearing Messages’ option is turned on. Instagram, on the other hand, has ‘Vanish Mode’, where messages disappear once users leave the chat.
Also Read: You season 4 part 1 review: Effectively transforms into a murder mystery