Re: Scope for self-destructing email?

["John Levine" <[e-mail]>]

In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>This seems to work for me. Any problems which could come up with having a
>central authority for this feature?

Many.  What if I tell the central authority that I implement
self-destructive e-mail but I'm lying?  How could the central
authority tell?  I'm pretty sure I can pass whatever audits they make
since they have no way to tell what data I'm hiding in places they
can't see.

>4.) A really boiled down version of ephemeral mails could just mark the
>mail "outdated" if the information provided in the mail is not expected to
>hold good after some time, instead of actually expunging the mail.

As others have said, that feature has come and gone many times in the past.  In
netnews, which is similar in some ways to mail, there's an Expires: header which
works reasonably well, typically used to mark messages that stop being interesting
after some point like weather forecasts or event reminders.  There's no guarantee
that anyone will follow the advice, and you certainly can't use it to force stuff
to disappear, but it's been occasionally useful.

R's,
John