I just received a media drop from a portal, I opened it and got an image of an internal Niantic memo entitled "Identifying Sensitives".
I know that this is a part of the game, and if I can decode the image I'll get a passcode to unlock some in-game items. But I don't have time during the week to go through the thing pixel by pixel and converting the first letter of each line to hex, etc etc.
So what I'm wondering is, can I ignore it for a few days, or a week, and still gain items from it later? I believe that Google recently changed how media codes given out via google+ and twitter work; they now expire after a short time. I'm hoping the same does not apply to these in-game codes.
Best Answer
In theory, media items contains encrypted passcodes that will give you some items (resonators, XMP, shield), some XM and AP.
BUT, in reality, all those items have already been published on the niantic project site. And once published on this site, passcodes are decoded pretty fast (from a few minutes to a few hours), and publicly leaked (once a passcode is public, it is redeemed in a few minutes). EDIT : since decodeingress community recently decided to stop to release passcode in a clear way (and ban all the leakers), passcode can now live almost 24 hours before being redeemed, enough time for a lot of people to have fun decoding them and obtain the reward !
You can learn more on decoding items on this site
As a conclusion, you can drop media item as soon as you grab one by hacking a portal because it is probably already decoded/leaked/redeemed, but if you like decoding stuff, follow the NianticProject site, every day there are new things to decode (and it's fun :) )
EDIT : You can find a list of already decoded items here