Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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methods to send self destructing emails (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 3 days ago by smq@discuss.tchncs.de to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey Lemmy!

Exactly as the title says, where self-destructing means that no matter what email provider I, or my recipients use, the email will be gone after a set amount of time.

The methods I have come up with are:

using a PrivateBin or PasteBin link.
- requires the recipient to click on a link that opens in another app/tab
- easy to set up
using an HTML remote content stylesheet with CSS ::after to inject the body text of the email; then, if I control the server, I can delete the stylesheet and the email will be gone.
- embedded in the email, but plain text only. I'm not even sure if it can do line breaks.
loading an SVG from a remote source

Does anyone have more methods?

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[–] Zoma@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

you could encrypt the emails body with a gpg key that's going to expire soon.

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Still could take a screenshot once it is being displayed. Or change the clock on the computer viewing the email.

[–] Zoma@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No solution will prevent people taking screenshots

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

There are solutions, just requires that the software has control of the hardware. But there's always the possibility to take a picture of the screen with a second device. But, yeah, there's basically no solution that prevents all possibility of a message totally disappearing without controlling all aspects of the display device and the environment it's used in. That's why things like certification exams that need to prevent information from leaking are always in fairly controlled environments, for example.