This Email Will Self Destruct...

Buggernut writes "A startup high-tech firm called Disappearing Inc. has created a system that does just that. It encrypts each e-mail message, lets the sender set the key's life span at anywhere from a few seconds to years, then turns the message back to gibberish once the key self-destructs. "

Comments

Done before

[jd]

There are several companies offering this. The idea seems to be "Don't be like Bill Gates", and leave incriminating e-mails around.

IMHO, it won't work, as people will either be forced to use a specific e-mail product, or there will be a high risk of the self-destruct system not working.

Even if the message DOES self-destruct, so what? You can scan a hard-disk and read off the last 10 or so layers of data, which might include the non-encrypted form, or the encrypted form with a valid key. From there, it'd be child's play to get the message.

Yes, you can use wiping software, which will write over the sectors of a deleted file N times, to ensure no data could possibly be read from them, but even there, there are problems - temporary directories, swap space, etc, which might not be wipable.

There are far, far better ways to secure e-mail from prying eyes. This is a marketing gimic, for those too paranoid to trust their systems, but not knowledgable enough to know what can be trusted.