New Apple app TigerText lets love rats cover tracks

Apple's claim that "there's an app for everything" has been underlined by the unveiling of a new smartphone application aimed at 'love rats' such as golfer Tiger Woods and footballer Ashley Cole. The software - "coincidentally" called TigerText - promises to erase incriminating text messages from both the sender's and the recipient's phones.

The £1.60-a-month app works by allowing senders to put a timed delete on sent messages, meaning the texts cannot be read by others or sold on to tabloid newspapers. Rather than being read on the phone, messages are instead stored on servers and read remotely. They are deleted after a timeframe which is specified by the sender although there is also an instantaneous "delete after reading" option. Both parties must be using Apple iPhones and have the app installed.

Similar software already exists for older mobile phones but TigerText is the first application for the new generation of smartphones such as the iPhone. It has already launched in the United States and will be available to iPhone users in Britain this month. Blackberry and other smartphone users will be able to buy the software later this year.

The app is also expected to appeal to politicians, lawyers and business people as well as adulterers. But it comes too late for the likes of Woods, Cole and TV presenter Vernon Kay who was also recently caught out sending racy messages to a Page 3 glamour model, Rhian Sugden.

TigerText founder Jeffrey Evans claims he had already chosen the name when Tiger Woods's racy messages to his mistresses including New York nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel were revealed.

Meanwhile Ashley Cole is no doubt wishing the software had been available before he allegedly sent a blonde secretary hundreds of explicit texts and a series of X-rated photos that showed him in a state of undress and also arousal.

Evans claims the app will bring "safety and peace of mind" to iPhone users who wish to keep certain messages private. "For the first time, you have complete control over what happens to texts after you hit send." ·