If you are sending an email that contains sensitive information like bank account details or credit card numbers, or if you are worried about your emails becoming part of a large-scale email hack, a new Chrome extension allows you to send email messages that can self-destruct after being read, very much like the messages in Mission Impossible television series.
Dmail, brainchild of the team behind the social bookmarking service Delicious, adds a ‘Send with Dmail’ button in addition to the standard ‘Send’ button, allowing users to revoke sent emails.
However, this is not an entirely new phenomenon. Microsoft allows Outlook users at organisations that use Exchange Server to recall emails, but the feature only works if the message is sent to an email address within the organisation.
Furthermore, Gmail recently announced its ‘Undo Send’ option, which allows users to revoke sent emails within 30 seconds. Dmail, however, lets you preset the duration for how long you want the message to be accessible before it self-destructs. In fact, if you are not sure about a timeframe, you can select ‘never’ and revoke the email at any point in the future.
The messages are encrypted and whenever the sender restricts access, the recipient will no longer be able to see the message.
Dmail further claims that they will soon add a feature that will restrict the email message from being forwarded, i.e. only the intended recipient will be able to see the message.
While these Dmail messages can be received on any email service, it can only be sent using Gmail on the Chrome browser.
