Shutterbit: Peer-to-Peer Image Sharing

Note:

The ShutterBit website associated with project is no longer hosted.

If you're like most people today, when you want to share a picture you might upload it to Imgur or Discord or Facebook. It's easy and quick... But is it dangerous? What happens to those uploaded files in the days, or years, to come?

Do uploads dream?

Maybe the uploads sit quietly on those web servers, never to be visited again. Or... maybe... someone stumbles across the URL. Maybe the company is sold, with all of their data given to the highest bidder. Maybe it gets swept up in the latest hack, or discovered by an employee who thinks it's worth sharing around. Maybe a government demands access. Maybe a bunch of them do.

Who really knows? Not you, that's for sure. All you really know is that once you leave a file on someone else's servers, you lose control over who sees that file, when, and in what context.

Don't upload to anyone's servers

If you could avoid uploading to a server then you could retain some of that control (and some of your privacy.) The file lives with you and whoever you send it to.

Peer-to-peer image sharing

You don't upload your pictures to ShutterBit. Instead, when you drag your images onto ShutterBit it creates a temporary link that you can share with a friend. When that friend opens the link it sends the pictures directly from your computer to theirs. This is accomplished by opening a WebRTC connection. Once you close the tab the link becomes broken. If anyone else visits that link in the future they will find an empty connection.

What Shutterbit isn't

This is not an anonymous image sharing tool. The records of what IP addresses have connected, and when, can be logged by the ShutterBit server. That aspect isn't different from any other image sharing website.

ShutterBit is also not a DRM tool. It doesn't prevent your friend from uploading the file somewhere else later. You are responsible for deciding if the friend you send it to is trustworthy.