Email messages never disappear, could be longlive liability<\/p>\n
By Lim Tri Santosa<\/p>\n
BANDUNG (JP): Are you haunted by some of the things you have
\nsaid in an email over the years? Ever have that awful feeling of
\nregret? You know you have been caught, and you wish, wish to God,
\nthat you could turn back the clock and make that one thing you
\ndid, said or wrote just go away. Maybe it was misspelling your
\nname on a resume, or a tongue-in-cheek email you sent.<\/p>\n
Emails never really die. People like Monica Lewinsky, Bill
\nGates and Oliver North are celebrities who have learned the hard
\nway that a message long thought deleted can be found on the
\nnetwork and later be used against its author. It is more of a
\ndanger than people realize.<\/p>\n
Perhaps you have heard the story about NASA spending millions
\nof dollars to develop a pen that can write in zero gravity, but I
\nam not sure whether this pen can be used in normal gravity. A
\nU.S. company called Disappearing, Inc. has a new piece of
\nsoftware that could change all that. It is like a new pen
\nsoftware equipped with \"disappearing\" ink, which makes your email
\nunreadable after a specified period of time.<\/p>\n
Disappearing Email is an email delivery system that allows
\nusers to send encrypted messages across the Internet, which can
\nonly be read for a specific length of time. After the time period
\nhas elapsed, the encryption key, necessary for reading the
\nmessage, is deleted from the Disappearing Email Server, rendering
\nthe message unreadable and therefore worthless.<\/p>\n
Disappearing Email works with Microsoft Outlook 98 or Outlook
\n2000 running on Windows 95, Windows 98 or NT. Outlook Express is
\na completely different product.<\/p>\n
Disappearing Email does not support Outlook Express, but any
\nemail client software (Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) can read
\nDisappearing Email messages.<\/p>\n
When you download the free edition Disappearing Email for
\nMicrosoft Outlook plug-in (about 350KB) from Disappearing's Web
\nsite (www.disappearing.com), it is automatically installed and a
\n\"Send Disappearing\" icon appears on the Outlook toolbar. You use
\nOutlook in the normal way to compose messages. If you want to set
\na time limit on the message, click on the Send Disappearing icon.
\nThe plug-in encrypts your messages using the 128-bit Blowfish
\nalgorithm. It accesses Disappearing's key server through a secure
\nlink, assigns a unique decryption key, and sends the message on
\nits way.<\/p>\n
On the receiving end, the email server is once again contacted
\nfor the necessary key, and the message is then decoded and
\ndisplayed to the viewer.<\/p>\n
For recipients that are not running Outlook, the email viewer
\nallows them to view Disappearing encoded messages within their
\nbrowser. But after the time limit specified by the sender, the
\ndecryption key is erased from Disappearing's key server, making
\nthe message unreadable and effectively destroying it, even if the
\nrecipient stores it.<\/p>\n
Users of Disappearing Email for Microsoft Outlook can specify
\nshorter or longer time periods for the message to expire,
\nstarting as short as 30 minutes. The simplicity of the system is
\nunderscored on the receiving side. The recipient does not need a
\nplug-in or any special software to read your message. Any mail
\nclient that handles HTML, including all major email programs and
\nbrowser-based emails, such as Hotmail or Yahoo, can read your
\nmail.<\/p>\n
What happens when someone replies to or forwards a
\nDisappearing Email? When you send a reply, a forwarded or
\nredirected message a second key is generated, and both keys are
\nneeded to read the reply. So when the original message expires,
\nyou can be certain that any replies or forwarded copies are also
\npermanently unreadable. You can, if you wish, send a reply or
\nforward the email that is set to expire before the original
\nmessage, but because the original sender's expiration setting is
\nalways honored, you cannot extend the life of the conversation by
\nsetting a later expiration.<\/p>\n
There are some minor glitches that you must be aware of in
\nDisappearing Email's known issue. First, it may not work
\ncorrectly if your Internet connection is using a proxy server or
\nfirewalls that perform http validation. Second, when Word is set
\nas the email editor in Microsoft Outlook, you cannot send
\nDisappearing Email. Finally, HTML and rich text message
\nformatting cannot be preserved inside the Disappearing Email
\nmessage.<\/p>\n
With email, we sometimes use language very loosely, but it
\nshould be understood that we should not use this \"disappearing\"
\nemail technology illegally or to hurt someone's feelings by
\nsending misleading information or bad words. The point is,
\nbecause we are making this powerful technology so publicly
\navailable we need to protect the community and ourselves from any
\nabuse. As new technology comes into being, it is up to everyone
\nto manage how they are applied so that everyone can benefit.<\/p>\n
After you read this article, you will be able to breathe
\neasier in the knowledge that your hasty email's thoughts will not
\ncome back to haunt you at some far distant point in the future
\nafter using the new products from Disappearing, Inc.<\/p>",
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