Can I send a 'single read' email??

longwalks1

just curious, can i send an email that can only be read once? (a bit inspector gadget I know....)

danthemoneysavingman

probably not.


if nothing else, this will prompt someone to prove me wrong ;-)

keithdc

Don't think so!


You could possibly provide an internet link that can only be read once (I think)!

andydiysaver

keithdc wrote: »

Don't think so!


You could possibly provide an internet link that can only be read once (I think)!

that's how you do it - email a link to a site where you arrange the JS code to remove content as soon as it's visited, but make it a very obscure URL or any one out there can get lucky the code is silly and it does the vanish in one trick for the first served not your intended recipient.... .

redcard

https://privnote.com/

victor2

Been watching too much Mission Impossible? :rotfl:
As said, it could be done on a web page, but to avoid robots and the like hitting it first, you'd need it protected with some sort of pre-arranged password. I suppose you could send an email to the intended recipient saying something like...
Top secret self-destruct message at , password is [password].

John_Gray

You'd have to prevent someone doing a screen print once the message is displayed! And taking a photo of the screen.

Good luck...

andydiysaver

bit like that iphone app kicking about where you can send dirty picture safe in the knowledge that they self destruct in 20 seconds or so..... until some coder cracks it and they last a whole lot longer! !!


I think it was Hawkins that said information could not ever be destroyed, unless you have a handy local singularity of course, then is open to debate..

InsideInsurance

britishboy wrote: »

just curious, can i send an email that can only be read once? (a bit inspector gadget I know....)

Not at all. For it to be able to be read it has to be downloaded onto the users computer and you as a third party will never have enough control over someone elses computer to delete all traces of it etc.

You could do certain things to make it harder to view it more than once - easiest by redirecting them to a unique link - but you cant get round them doing screen prints/ print to PDF etc

What are you trying to achieve?

esuhl

victor2 wrote: »

As said, it could be done on a web page, but to avoid robots and the like hitting it first, you'd need it protected with some sort of pre-arranged password.

I don't think search engines run scripts on pages, do they? You can use the NOINDEX meta tag to stop the page which will stop the page being indexed and appearing in search engine results.

Anyway, if someone can get the web page on their screen (even once), they can have their computer save the output. Even non-techies could do a screendump or just take a photo of the content.

You might be able to make it tricky for a user, but there will always be some way round any restrictions.

paddyrg

It's worse than you think, every mail server at every hop en-route potentially could be reading/keeping a copy of your email. SMTP is specifically not designed to do single-read data

Best to use a service like http://www.self-destructing-email.com/ (not a recommendation, just an example) which will reduce that.