[119056] in Cypherpunks
Re: Worthless Disappearing [Self-Destruct E-mail]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sunder)
Wed Oct 13 18:40:20 1999
Message-ID: <380507B2.24B1F856@sunder.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:29:06 -0400
From: Sunder <sunder@sunder.net>
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To: cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com
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Reply-To: Sunder <sunder@sunder.net>
This is totally worthless no matter how it is implemented.
As long as the email can be displayed on a system on which you have
administrative control over the display, you can capture the email display.
Simple as taking pictures, or using a VCR to record your Playstation games.
In Bill's world, it's a simple Alt-Print Screen or two away, then feeding the
results to an OCR program.
IMHO, this is worthless as email protection, though it could take off in
ecommerce as say pay per view porn or such, and will easily be defeated by
porn pirates who install their own display drivers - ones that can write
snapshots of the display to the disk as (uncompressed) movies. :)
There's already something that does this called Lotus Screen Cam that comes
with the Lotus office suite. I think MS office might also have such a tool,
etc...
Secret Squirrel wrote:
>
> from educause:
>
> 'SELF-DESTRUCT' E-MAIL OFFERS VIRTUAL PRIVACY
> The problem of e-mail being stored on computers on both the
> sending and receiving end as well as along the networks they
> travel long after being erased by sender and recipient--and
> sometimes coming back as evidence, as in the Iran-Contra and
> Microsoft antitrust cases--could become a thing of the past after
> the introduction of a new system from San Francisco-based startup
> Disappearing. The Disappearing system creates a temporary "key"
> for sender and recipient to encrypt and decrypt messages. After
> a certain amount of time set by the sender, the "key" will be
> destroyed at Disappearing's site and the e-mail message will no
> longer be readable. The system should be available in the first
> part of 2000. (USA Today 10/07/99)
--
---------------------------- Kaos Keraunos Kybernetos --------------------
+ ^ + Sunder "Only someone completely distrustful of /|\
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+ v + Say 'Hi' to Echelon Howard Safir, 27 July 1999.
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