Re: Email expiration?

["Stephen John Smoogen" <smooge () gmail com>]

On 6/15/06, Kurt Buff <kurt.buff () gmail com> wrote:
> On 6/14/06, Thiago Lima @ WF <thiagolima () webforce com br> wrote:
> >
> >         Hi,
> >
> >         There's any way to 'auto-destroy' na email sent after N days?
> >
> >         I'd like to send an email to someone and after N days the email
> > became unreadeble. Is that possible? I thougth about a certificate that
> > expires. Will that work? Does something like that exists?
> >
> > Thanks alot.
> > Thiago Lima.
>
> In the general case, this is pretty silly. All they have to do is
> receive it, print it or copy the text of it, and it's there
> essentially forever.
>
> The only way this works is if they receive it but don't read it before
> the encryption cert expires. I can't imagine a scenario that justifies
> so much work.

The issue seems to come up when someone wants to make a technological
solution to the old 'hand-carry/destroy after reading' of a document.
In these cases there are usually protocols of  encryption and seals to
help clarify that the document was not tampered with during the
transmission. And then a protocol that when delivered it is read in
the presence of a recording individual and then destroyed. All of
those can be subverted but done correctly the level of trust can be
pretty high. So people wonder if they can have a technological
solution that would cuts costs or be better. Sadly I dont think you
can cut costs too much because you have to be able to put extra costs
into trusting the end-points [Physically controlled terminal, 2
person/2 organization rule to confirm that copies of the document
weren't made, etc]


> Kurt


--
Stephen J Smoogen.
CSIRT/Linux System Administrator