images-5The latest rage is to create messages that disappear into the ether – never to be seen again – at least that what the person generating the message hopes.

And Austin-based Bearch has created a new version of its mobile app, Unseen, to do just that. It’s challenging the market dominated by Snapchat.

Unseen, an anonymous social networking app for college students, lets people send direct messages that disappear. It features data encryption to protect the sender’s privacy. Unseen reports it encrypts all information so that nothing posted to the public feeds can be tracked back to an individual.

“Unseen was created to help students form meaningful connections based on real interests, and user privacy and anonymity is absolutely integral to that,” Michael Schramm, CEO of Unseen said in a news statement. “We love that students are using the app as a means to meet new people, but publically swapping Snapchat handles undermines anonymity. We knew the only way to build on this exciting dimension of the app without compromising our users’ privacy was to create our own private messaging option within Unseen.”

Unseen claims that if its messages or images are intercepted by a hacker or other application, its encryption technology makes the messages unreadable.

Initially launched at Texas A&M University in May of 2014, the app is now used on almost 150 college campuses nationwide.