Re: Scope for self-destructing email?

[Warren Kumari <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 6:56 PM, John Levine <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 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.
>

I suspect that one of my previous responses here might have been both
too subtle, and also quite likely to have been ignored as spam.
All of these sorts of solutions will always be subject to the issue
that you don't control the recipient system -- there is noting (well,
very little) that stops the recipient from taking a screen capture of
the message as it is displayed, or even whipping out their smartphone
and taking a picture of the screen.
See: http://www.owl-stretching-time.com/because-you-dont-contol-the-recipient.png
There is nothing that the sender can include which will make a image
of the message go "Boom" later.


>>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mail "outdated" if the information provided in the mail is not expected to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.

Yup - I think that an advisory note (Expire:) saying "This mail might
not be relevant anymore (it was an invitation to a party last week)"
has some (limited) value, but a: relying on something like this to
actually expunge information is unworkable and b: rude. I might want
to search my mail to see what the weather forecast said last Thursday,
or search event reminders to know where I was last Tuesday. Once
you've sent me the mail, it's mine!

W

>
> R's,
> John
>



-- 
I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad
idea in the first place.
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing
regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair
of pants.
   ---maf