<nettime> 'Self-destruct' e-mail offers virtual privacy

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola {AT} phil.gn.apc.org>]

 >Say Alice is sending a message to Bob. When she hits the send key, a small
 >add-on filter to her e-mail program goes out across the Net and notifies
 >the Disappearing Inc. site.
 >
 >The site assigns her message an identifying number and gives her a software
 >"key" with which to scramble it. When Bob opens the message,  the same key
 >from Disappearing Inc. unscrambles it.
 >
 >What makes that e-mail temporary: Alice can say she wants the key to exist
 >for as short as a few seconds or decades. When time is up, the key is
 >deleted from Disappearing Inc. 

It would be nice if the self-destruct key is handled like the public keys
of PGP, where any number of certification sites can be set up, so that a
group of us, for instance, do not need to use Disappearing Inc.  but can
set up our own self-destruct keys site. This would presumably require that
the algorithms for this approach be open source... 

Roberto Verzola

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