Mission possible: researchers make online text self-destruct
Found on Ars Technica on Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Their scheme, called Vanish, encrypts the message, and then essentially throws away the key. The trick is that the key will take a set amount of time before disappearing from view; during that time, it's still possible to access the data.
Because the online storage system purges data after set periods of time, once that time is up, the key is permanently lost. In essence, the message has self-destructed.
This message will self-destruct in three, two, one. Gone. Now that super-secret text is gone for good. I'm so glad I made a screenshot of it (or just copied and pasted it). The idea isn't bad, but I bet some users might think that it will take care of the security they should apply. Vanish is a tool, not a solution to non-existent security precautions.