Email Destruction, Audit Trails, and Rewritting History
Sure there have been times I wished I hadn't sent an email but I lived. For those who don't want to risk sender's regret, Bigsting is offering a self-destruct service for email messages. Information Week writes of this as a service to protect yourself from messages going astray:
So why would a person need to use such an e-mail service? BigString says archived e-mail messages cause too many mishaps where they can get into the wrong hands if stored for too long or pulled as evidence in situations that could have been avoided. It's like a record that never goes away.
But like late night TV ads for kitchen knives, wait there's more.
Not only can you destroy emails you've sent you can change them with, presumably, in undetectable ways. Bigstring's Web site boast the ability to change email trails:
Bigstring lets you copy and correct the errors even after your email has left the outbox. You can even self-destruct messages and resend a new one, and only you will know the switch has occurred!
So much for audit trails via emails. Basically, what this service offers is the ability to rewrite history. How useful this would have been to the Walmart execs canned for reasons documented in their personal emails and others that are subject to corporate snooping. Bigstring's service seems to undermine any sense of a record of source when it comes to email. Of course email is just one type of electronic communication, why not apply the same technology to other forms?
I'm all for privacy and protections on privacy but tampering with records goes too far. I wonder how the legal system will deal with users of such services when it comes to corporate and government email systems.
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