Ruffle is a new Online tool that lets you send anonymous SMS photo messages to just about anyone with a phone.

Put simply, the recipient won’t know who sent the picture unless there’s some identification (your face, or a name or message scrawled across the picture) included in the image file.

Neither the company nor their servers record any information about the sender. The recipient merely sees the message as coming from Ruffle.us or an anonymous phone number used by the company.

The Online tool on the Website lets you upload the picture & use one of 3 phone numbers in the U.S., Canada & Australia to send the picture. You simply select your location, type in the recipient’s number, upload the photo & well, “Ruffle” it.

This idea about letting people “Ruffle” pictures, as the company calls it, arose out of a startup weekend. It’s no surprise that startup weekends tend to throw up a whole lot of fringe ideas because teams need to come up with an idea & develop the whole thing in short order.

A service like Ruffle is bound to raise fears of misuse. After all, it does allow total anonymity.

People on a Reddit thread about the service rather bluntly point out the possibilities for misuse, with one user sarcastically noting, “I’m sure this will never get abused by bullies, mobsters, confidence tricksters, & scam artists.”

One of the Ruffle founders responded on the thread, saying that Ruffle was built as an experiment at a startup weekend. He also noted that they’re building an opt-out feature so that anyone who doesn’t want to receive anonymous pictures can block Ruffle from sending them messages.

Of course, people who don’t want to receive such messages may have already blocked them using the various spam prevention tools that are available to telecom network subscribers. Ruffle may appeal to a niche group of security-conscious Internet users, but it’s hard for the ordinary consumer to see any advantage in sending or receiving an anonymous SMS picture, unless it’s a prank.

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