About this "Big String" product Air America's running ads for....

[chalky]

This product might have been around for a while but this is the first I've heard of it so pardon my Luddite-itude.

I'm all for an application that lets me recall messages and I've hit the "recall this message" button more than once in Outlook.

But messages that can't be forwarded? And messages that self-destruct after a certain period of time? Is it just me or is this less a helpful application and more a tool screaming to be abused?

[shockingelk]

1. Sounds like a rip-off

Email messages can always be forwarded and never include a self-destruct.

[chalky]

2. I'm hoping so. I couldn't find anything about it in Google,

so either it's very new or a scam.
Not that I would be happy that Air America's running a commercial for a scam, but it creeps me out that someone could send me messages that I couldn't save or forward as evidence, so to speak.

[Richard Steele]

3. Without a clue, I gotta agree with ShockingElk.

REAL products are promoted by REAL people;
people who hope you will want to tell your
friends about how great their product is!

Self-distructing non-forewardable eMails
seem like a BIG "red flag" to me!

TOTALLY flunks the "smell test", knowhutImean?

[chalky]

4. Ooops. Even if "Big String" is a fake, there are other products out there

that set a precedent:

Nowadays a new breed of companies is setting about getting those same people to make their email "shred," hide, vanish, or otherwise disappear. The reason: security.

The latest product along these lines is SafeMessage, software promising the ultimate email disappearing act by way of a communications scheme similar to that of popular song-sharing software Napster.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,38936,00.html

And this:

A new online service from security firm Stealth Message that allows web users to send confidential emails has a built-in self-destruct feature to add further privacy by eradicating the normal digital trail left by emails on computer systems.

http://www.computing.co.uk/computeractive/news/2012101/email-self-destruct-five-seconds

Yikes.

[shockingelk]

5. Here is the thing

If you are the sender you have no control over whether your email is forwarded or "self-destructed". Period.

If you are the receiver you can choose to delete or not forward an email as you please.

The only situation where these things would be useful would be to install it on everybody's computer in a company to try to weakly enforce policies of "no forwarding internal email" or "delete all emails over 30 days old".

Even then, there's nothing to stop an employee from printing, saving as ... or taking a picture of their screen and mailing it as a post card.

[chalky]

6. That makes me feel better. Except for the Enron factor.

Further down in the Wired (they're pretty credible, right?) article, there's this:

Other products, notably that of Disappearing Inc. which has similar erasable email ability, were launched earlier this year. Disappearing Inc.'s product, by contrast, is server-based. This allows company administrators to set a company-wide policy in which email expiration and deletion is controlled by the server itself, protecting the company at large.

Disappearing Inc.'s server-based design also allows it to be integrated with the widely used and familiar email software Microsoft Outlook.

In an age where the FBI's email-sniffing Carnivore system and email correspondence play prominent roles in court cases, security-sensitive communicators are motivated to think twice about their electronic-message trails.

And yeah, an employee can take a snapshot of an email...if they know that it will have significance in the future. I can't tell you how many emails I've saved in my archives, only to whip them out later and have them save my ass when I was able to produce them. Not real excited about the idea of printing everything out and having to do a manual search later, or of doing a screen-shot of everything that comes down the pike.

(And no, I'm not exaggerating when I mention Enron. Welcome to corporate America.)

[benburch]

7. Except...

When what is sent to YOU is active content that fetches an encrypted message from elsewhere that you see when you view the message.

And yes, taking a picture of the screen would defeat this, but you could make this less likely with a limited viewing time such that the recipient would have to think fast.

[shockingelk]

8. That depends on the viewer's computer

... which is completely out of the sender's control.

Email is just static text ... if you want it to be anything more, the thing that gives it "more" (ie, displaying MIME encoded attachments, "Flagging", any scripting) must be understood by the receiver's computer - the sender's has nothing to do with anything other than sending ASCII text.