Apps Like Whisper and Secret Allow People to Unburden Themselves Without Revealing Names

Apps Like Whisper and Secret Allow People to Unburden Themselves Without Revealing Names is a report published in The Economic Times on 4 June 2014, written by Varuni Khosla. The article explores the growing popularity of anonymous social sharing applications that allow users to express themselves without identity disclosure, featuring commentary from Sunil Abraham on how privacy awareness naturally evolves as users gain attention on social networks, and insights from psychologists on why anonymity provides emotional security in an era of surveillance and social judgment.

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Article Details

📰 Published in:: The Economic Times
✍️ Author:: Varuni Khosla
📅 Date:: 4 June 2014
📄 Type:: Feature Report
📰 Newspaper Link:: Read Online

Full Text

Synopsis
Apps such as Whisper and Secret allow people to unburden themselves of things they may not want to tell their mothers or anyone else for that matter.

NEW DELHI: "I am a receptionist in my company. When everyone leaves for lunch, I sneak into the boardroom and make believe that I am the CEO," reads a post on smartphone app Whisper.

That post veers between endearing and embarrassing but no one knows who sent it. Whisper, available for Android and iOS, allows users to post anonymously and its enormous success appears to tap into a huge need. Who knew anonymity could be so much in demand in today's world?

Before this, there was Snapchat, which allows users to send pictures to friends that vanish in a few seconds. But apps such as Whisper and Secret allow people to unburden themselves of things they may not want to tell their mothers or anyone else for that matter.

An example on Whisper's home page: "My husband doesn't know both our kids aren't his. They're his brothers." Whisper reportedly gets 3 billion monthly page views thanks to posts like that.

Apps that offer a sense of security

While vicious gossip and valuable corporate secrets could conceivably be leaked through such apps, some of the posts seem bizarrely harmless, such as this one on Secret: "I have an iPhone and I secretly wish I had an Android phone."

Formerly prolific Facebook users think this is a great idea. Such as the advertising agency copywriter, now in her mid-20s and also wiser, who long ago posted: "is lovn evy bit o mi relationship!! n lovd d beer last nyt!! mwah baibee!!" She would also post views on bosses, cuss words and all, apart from details about fights with her boyfriend. Although still active in social media with 700 Facebook friends, this user now doesn't share anything more intimate than the day's news updates on her status messages. Naturally, she doesn't want to be identified.

She loves Secret, where she feels free to post whatever she feels like as her status message, without revealing her name or personal details that could get her into trouble.

Many like her feel Facebook timelines allow too easy access to posts that one would rather forget about. Psychologists say anonymity gives people a sense of security.

"When you write such messages via these apps you aren't communicating with anyone who knows you," said Geetanjali Kumar, a psychologist, counsellor and family therapist based in Delhi. "So, if you have been emotionally hurt at work, you are expressing innermost desires, you will get gratification sans the judgement of peers."

Due to the complexity of social networks where 'friends' can include co-workers, former colleagues and even current bosses, there can be status and intellectual differences with judgments being made, she said.

Sunil Abraham, the executive director of Bangalore-based research firm Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and a privacy advocate, said research suggests this trend toward anonymity is a natural evolution.

"As you climb the attention ladder on social networks, you become more aware of your privacy. But in order to climb the ladder, you have to share information about your personal self — including scandalous messages or scantily clad pictures," he said. "At the time when the attention is less, you do not distinguish between desirable and public attention, but as soon as you hit that level, you start caring for your privacy."

Apps such as Secret, which is said to have more than 1 million active users, and Whisper, give subscribers access to a river of secrets. But such apps also serve as a protection against online attacks, said Ankita Gaba, co-founder of socialsamosa. com, an Indian social media knowledge storehouse.

"Facebook privacy is a growing concern among online users especially with the arrests and bully attacks," Gaba said. "Users are also getting fatigued with the amount of data created on the social network and apps like Secret act as a platform intended to have people share their fears, inhibitions, apprehensions and have the community encourage each other."

Meanwhile, users are much more concerned than before about sharing locations and other personal details on Facebook.

"I set my privacy settings to allow more access for trusted friends and highly limited access to acquaintances who might end up being stalkers," said a marketing professional who didn't want to be named. "I do not want to write anything about who I am with or how I feel on Facebook."

Clinical psychologist Aruna Broota said people tend to hide behind veils especially since social networks are growing. Pressure at work makes them frustrated and there is a need to vent as they struggle with modernity and tradition, unsure if society will accept them that way.

"We tend to adhere to cultural codes of conduct on our social networks," Broota said. "And so have this need to express thoughts without being identified."

Context and Background

The emergence of anonymous social applications in 2014 represented a significant inflection point in social media’s evolution. After years of platforms encouraging users to build elaborate digital identities under their real names—Facebook’s insistence on authentic identity being the most prominent example—apps like Whisper and Secret offered a counter-narrative. They suggested that persistent identity wasn’t necessary for meaningful social connection, and that anonymity might actually enable more authentic expression than the curated personas dominating traditional social networks.

Sunil Abraham’s concept of the “attention ladder” provided a compelling framework for understanding this shift. His observation that users initially share indiscriminately to gain visibility, then become privacy-conscious only after achieving attention, explained a paradox many experienced: the very content that built their social media presence later became a source of embarrassment or vulnerability. This created a generation of users who’d climbed to prominence through oversharing but now felt trapped by their digital histories, unable to delete years of posts without losing their accumulated social capital.

The article captured a particular moment of social media fatigue. The advertising copywriter’s evolution from posting “lovn evy bit o mi relationship!!” to carefully curating news updates illustrated how users were learning, often painfully, that Facebook’s permanence and searchability made it unsuitable for ephemeral emotional expression. The arrests and “bully attacks” mentioned by Ankita Gaba referenced real consequences—people losing jobs, facing legal action, or experiencing harassment based on their social media posts—that were reshaping user behaviour.

Psychologist perspectives highlighted deeper cultural tensions. Aruna Broota’s observation about people struggling between “modernity and tradition” resonated particularly in the Indian context, where social networks often included family members, community elders, and others representing traditional values alongside peers embracing contemporary lifestyles. The pressure to maintain culturally appropriate personas online whilst harbouring thoughts or behaviours that might not conform created cognitive dissonance that anonymous platforms could relieve.

However, the apps also raised concerns that the article touched on lightly—the potential for “vicious gossip and valuable corporate secrets” to leak anonymously. Without accountability, anonymous platforms could enable harassment, defamation, or corporate espionage whilst shielding perpetrators from consequences. This tension between authentic expression and responsible speech would plague anonymous social networks, with several eventually shuttering or pivoting away from pure anonymity.

The comparison to Snapchat’s ephemeral messaging was instructive. Whilst Snapchat allowed private communication that disappeared, apps like Whisper and Secret created public anonymous broadcasts—a different privacy proposition altogether. This distinction mattered because it meant content was both identifiable (visible to everyone) and unidentifiable (not linked to the poster), creating unique moderation and accountability challenges.

The article also documented an important shift in how users understood Facebook privacy. The marketing professional’s strategy of tiered access—trusted friends receiving more information, acquaintances getting restricted views—showed sophisticated privacy management emerging as users recognised that Facebook’s default settings inadequately protected them. This represented a maturation of social media literacy, where users actively crafted multiple audience-specific personas rather than assuming a single public identity would suffice.