Snapchat Inc., the popular mobile message application, deceived its customers when it promised that its photo and video messages would disappear shortly after being sent, said the Federal Trade Commission Thursday in announcing settlement of charges filed against the Venice, California-based company.

Snapchat said in a statement that it has already addressed the issues raised by the FTC.

The FTC said in its complaint that although the company had promised senders could set how long a photo or video message would appear, with a default set to a maximum of 10 seconds, “in fact several methods exist by which a recipient can use tools outside of the application to save both photo and video messages, allowing the recipient to access and view the photos or videos indefinitely.”

Among other charges, the FTC said although Snapchat had implied prior to September 2012 through its user interface that the mobile phone number was the only information Snapchat collected to find the user's friends, the company mined deeper information.

In fact, it collects not only the phone number a user enters, but also, without informing the user, the names and phone numbers of all the contacts in the user's mobile device address book, said the complaint.

Under terms of the settlement, Snapchat is prohibited from misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains the privacy, security or confidentiality of users' information.

The commission voted to accept the consent order for public comment through June 9 in a 5-0 vote, after which it will decide whether to make it final, the agency said in a statement. Once that happens, each violation can incur a civil penalty of up to $16,000.

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“If a company markets privacy and security as key selling points in pitching its service to consumers, it is critical that it keep those promises,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in the statement. “Any company that makes misrepresentations to consumers about its privacy and security practices risks FTC action.”

“When we started building Snapchat, we were focused on developing a unique, fast, and fun way to communicate with photos,” the company responded in a statement. “We learned a lot during those early days. One of the ways we learned was by making mistakes, acknowledging them, and fixing them.

“While we were focused on building, some things didn't get the attention they could have. One of those was being more precise with how we communicated with the Snapchat community. This morning we entered into a consent decree with the FTC that addresses concerns raised by the commission.

“Even before today's consent decree was announced, we had resolved most of those concerns over the past year by improving the wording of our privacy policy, app description, and in-app just-in-time notifications. And we continue to invest heavily in security and countermeasures to prevent abuse.

“We are devoted to promoting user privacy and giving Snapchatters control over how and with whom they communicate. That's something we've always taken seriously, and always will,” the statement said.