If you love to watch secret agent or spy movies like James
Bond series, perhaps you have been familiar with external hard drive device
which can explode by itself after has been read/heard or when accessed by a
stranger, or it is popular with a term, ‘self-destructing’, the aim is of
course to protect important information stored in the device.
In the real world, self-destructing feature is likely to be
useful to protect sensitive information that's sent via email. Perhaps this is
the idea carried by a developer team of a new service called Dmail.
Dmail is a service that's connected to your Gmail account,
with a function to delete the email you have sent automatically in the inbox of
others. The idea is very interesting, because as we all know that after the
email is sent, we have no control at all to the information contained in the
email.
First of all, you are required to install the Dmail extension
in the Chrome browser. Furthermore, on 'Compose' page in Gmail, you will see an
additional button to activate this service. Next to it, you can select the desired
time related to how long before the email will be destroyed by itself. The time
selection is also vary; could be 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, or never. If you choose
the last option, you can still press the 'Revoke Email' so that all email
recipients can't access the information anymore.
When a recipient opens the encrypted email you send via
Dmail, he/she will find an instruction which says that the information in the
email can be opened by pressing the 'View Message' button. But if the recipient
is also installing Dmail extension, then he/she can access your messages
directly in the Gmail page.
When an email has exceeded the time interval you chose, or
you have revoked the email access with the 'Revoke Email' feature, then the
information stored inside the email will be lost forever. When a recipient
opens the email, he/she will see a message which says that the email is no
longer available.
Dmail so far can only be used by Gmail users, but the
integration with other email services has been planned for the future. Even the
developer is also ready to release its iOS version in August, followed by its
Android version.
With this service, you don't need to worry anymore when you
should submit sensitive information via email. The recipient can still get your
message, but then, the information is no longer circulating on the Internet,
minimizing the risk of stolen by hackers.
Although still in beta phase, Dmail has been ready to run
and can be enjoyed by users of Gmail. If you are interested you can download
its Chrome extension for free.