A new ‘digital condom’ app that blocks cameras and microphones on smartphones has been launched. It’s billed as a way to ensure that your partner doesn’t covertly take photos, video or audio of you while you have sex.
The Camdom, as it is called, has been created by German condom company Billy Boy in collaboration with advertising company Innocean Berlin.
To use the app, both sexual partners need to download it to their phone, open it, then sync their phones by swiping down within the app. The app will then shut down both devices’ cameras and microphones, until the devices are ‘consensually’ disconnected by unblock buttons being simultaneously pressed in the app on all connected phones.
A visual and sound alarm goes off on a phone if the phone synced to it is disconnected ‘nonconsensually’.
The app can be used to sync more than two phone devices, meaning it’s suitable for people with multiple phones, and orgies. It’s available on Google Play and is set to come to Apple’s App Store soon.
Billy Boy says that using the Camdom app is “as easy as using a real condom”, which isn’t a particularly audacious claim, considering how fiddly some prophylactics can be to correctly unfurl.
The also company says that the app is designed to “protect your digital intimacy”. However, the fact that it was created in conjunction with an advertising firm suggests that creating online buzz to whip up condom sales might be a priority too.
Still, any system that could potentially prevent nonconsensual recording, and potentially revenge porn, should be welcomed. It’s good if it just stirs a bit more discussion about these topics. But we do wonder if partners simply agreeing to turn off their phones before getting naked together might be more effective than multiple app downloading and syncing.
Sexual consent became a far more prominent issue following the #MeToo movement that began in the mid-2000s and went mainstream around a decade later, but consent-related phone apps have struggled to gain traction.
Apps such as iConsent, which records sexual consent between partners, have failed to become widely used, perhaps partly due to a general view that they would not be effective in proving true, informed consent in legal contexts.
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