This message will self destruct in.....

[Grant]

http://m.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2013/06/20/att-seeks-to-patent-self-destructing.html?r=full

Pretty neat..

AT&T is seeking to patent self-destructing email.

A U.S. patent application by AT&T that was made public today notes that once you send an email, you can't control what's done with it: it can be forwarded, printed, saved or copied.
"Conventional e-mail systems may also be inappropriate for sending confidential or proprietary information because these systems do not allow the sender of an e-mail message to control the lifespan of the e-mail message," the patent application notes. "E-mail messages may, therefore, languish in a recipient's e-mail 'in-box' or on an e-mail server computer for months or even years. Some e-mail systems will allow an e-mail recipient to specify that messages should be deleted after a certain amount of time. However, these systems do not allow the sender to specify a time for destruction of the sent e-mail message. Therefore, an e-mail sender cannot be certain that a sent e-mail message containing time sensitive information will ever be deleted."

AT&T says its new technology can create self-destructing e-mail messages that allows a user to specify a time for the destruction of a sent e-mail message and that will destroy all instances of the e-mail message when the specified time arrives. It also can restrict the number and type of things that may be done to a sent e-mail message, thereby restricting the ability of a recipient to replicate it.

"The e-mail message will be destroyed by the e-mail client application whether or not the message has been read," the patent application says. "Alternatively, if the e-mail message specifies that it should be deleted after it has been read, the e-mail client application will destroy the e-mail message once it has been opened and closed by the recipient. All instances of the e-mail message are deleted from the recipient's computer."
The inventors of the technology are three Atlantans, William A. Hartselle, Shannon M. Short and Vernon Meadows.
To read the patent application, click here.

[talisman]

That's going to save a lot of people a lot of trouble in the future.

[Grant]

That's going to save a lot of people a lot of trouble in the future.

People will find a way to fuck themselves with it as well. I can see several scenarios that this would not be welcomed.

[Binky]

Tech like this does exist to an extent (limiting forwards, auto expiration) but only works within a single environment. ONce sent outside an organization, the headers are stripped rendering the email a basic text file.

As for self destruct, impossible. Back end system backups, frozen images, even mirror copies stripped out to a mirror device. Once you create data - it exists and can always be recovered/accessed.

[talisman]

People will find a way to fuck themselves with it as well. I can see several scenarios that this would not be welcomed.

Without a doubt, as well as the countermeasures that will be invented to get around it. The evolution is going to be interesting.

[Binky]

Theres another HUGE reason why this won't implement - hacking.

Can you imagine an exploit that comes about where they make every single email autodestruct within a second? Software is fallible - you can not make a 100% secure system that is at the same time usable. There is a reason why the majority of people don't use encryption as its not simple to implement unless you understand it.

Fuck, most people can't understand the difference between a phone cable and a network cable.

[Ratt]

Tech like this does exist to an extent (limiting forwards, auto expiration) but only works within a single environment. ONce sent outside an organization, the headers are stripped rendering the email a basic text file.

As for self destruct, impossible. Back end system backups, frozen images, even mirror copies stripped out to a mirror device. Once you create data - it exists and can always be recovered/accessed.

This. Not to mention all the things an average end user can do. Screenshot, for example. I'm also willing to bet that a straight up copy/paste into a plain text document would thwart the self-delete feature.

[Ratt]

Theres another HUGE reason why this won't implement - hacking.

Can you imagine an exploit that comes about where they make every single email autodestruct within a second? Software is fallible - you can not make a 100% secure system that is at the same time usable. There is a reason why the majority of people don't use encryption as its not simple to implement unless you understand it.

Fuck, most people can't understand the difference between a phone cable and a network cable.

Yuh-huh! The network cable is thicker and it's blue!

[Binky]

Yuh-huh! The network cable is thicker and it's blue!

WRONG! it's Yellow!

Blue cables are used for Wireless.

[Grant]

You might be surprised at how hard it can be to get a "lost" email found off of a backup server and/or if things are actually backed up like they should be as per whatever retention policy is in place..at least in my experience. For the average user, adding a disappearing variant sounds pretty comical.

[Woods Racing Transmission]

Yuh-huh! The network cable is thicker and it's blue!

Sometimes they are they same cable.

[Ratt]

You might be surprised at how hard it can be to get a "lost" email found off of a backup server and/or if things are actually backed up like they should be as per whatever retention policy is in place..at least in my experience. For the average user, adding a disappearing variant sounds pretty comical.

I swear I just saw that email here somewhere...

Regarding backups and retention policy, I think Binky was talking about a much deeper level of recovery, like what forensic data recovery specialists do.

[Ratt]

Sometimes they are they same cable.

It was a joke, man. We use IP phones at my office, and my house is actually wired with (blue) Cat 5e in place of a traditional single-twisted-pair phone cable.

[Grant]

I swear I just saw that email here somewhere...

Regarding backups and retention policy, I think Binky was talking about a much deeper level of recovery, like what forensic data recovery specialists do.

Oh, yeah. I'm not talking about whether or not it could be found if looked for with the right resources. Anything posted on the Internet once has a good chance of being found again, deleted or not. I'm just saying that this would add a variable for those not in IT and have to ask others to recover a message, etc. I could see a large workload being placed on IT folks trying to recover time-bomb emails.

[71chevellejohn]

WRONG! it's Yellow!

Blue cables are used for Wireless.

Wireless doesn't need blue cables... it's wireLESS!