鈥淭HIS message will self-destruct in five seconds,鈥� the tape recorder in
Mission: Impossible warned. Now an e-mail service has created the
electronic equivalent of the exploding tapes from the cult TV series. And the
providers of the service are so confident about their system鈥檚 security they are
offering $50 000 to anyone who can hack it.
Using 2048-bit public key encryption to keep the e-mail secure en route,
Global Markets Research, a London-based company, has given its 1on1mail service
an added security feature. Called autoshredder, the function allows the user to
set the e-mail to delete itself from the recipient鈥檚 computer a specified amount
of time after being opened.
The idea is to prevent e-mails that may contain confidential or embarrassing
material coming back to haunt you. This is what happened to Microsoft鈥檚 Bill
Gates last year when he was forced to defend himself against his own private
e-mails in an antitrust case.
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To make sure the messages arrive safely, the company has designed the
1on1mail package as a secure network within the wider network of the
Internet鈥攁 鈥渃lient-based application鈥�. This ensures that the route is
always secure, says technical director Steven James.
And to guarantee that the messages self-destruct as planned, the package also
prevents recipients from performing certain actions that would undermine
security. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 just cut and paste out of it, that would be pointless,鈥�
says James.
The system also takes precautions to ensure that the e-mail is not stored
anywhere within the recipient鈥檚 computer, and when it auto-deletes the message
the system overwrites it so as not to leave any trace that could be undeleted
later.