Big Oops! - @Work - Disappearing Email - Brief Article - Evaluation

T+D, May, 2002 by William Powell

I can't remember the first time I sent an email and then immediately wished I hadn't. And then did it again and again. Most had typos, some were a bit heated. Nothing to lose sleep over, but a few fell into the "What was I thinking?" category. The thought of them sitting in someone's email archives or floating around cyberspace pummels my stomach like a tenderizing mallet flattening a piece of flank steak.

Thankfully, for those of us who occasionally send first and think later, there are a few programs on the market that can ensure that our embarrassment is fleeting.

One is Disappearing Email from Omniva www.disappearing.com. This add-in is a free trial version of the company's more advanced Omniva Policy Client. It works with Microsoft Outlook 98 and 2000, and is similar to a typical email encryption program. The difference is that instead of encrypting the message initially, Disappearing Email enables the user to delay the encryption until after the message has been sent. Once encrypted, the email becomes unreadable. Whether the delay is 30 minutes or 30 days is up to you.

One caveat: Disappearing Email is kind enough to inform recipients that your message has been set to self-destruct. There's nothing stopping them from copying and pasting your message to another document.

Should you think that federal agencies are tracking your email or that it's all one big conspiracy, 1on1mail.com offers a stand-alone email application that goes several steps further. The application features military-spec encryption, unique "1on1" keys that prevent government agency access, retrieval of a message after it has been read, and a read-only feature that prevents recipients from saving the email to a disk. Downloads of 1on1mail are available from the company's Website for US$46

* www.1on1mail.com.

Of course, the best way to avoid embarrassment is not to send questionable messages. But then, to err is human, and to scramble for the self-destruct key is just plain cool.

Site Seeing

If there's one way to perform a task in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, there are a dozen. Take Favorites (Bookmarks for Netscape users). I like the idea of storing my favorite Websites in a handy drop-down list. One day, I'll take the time to organize them all into subfolders and create a well-tended library of only the best sites on the Web. But once you have 25, 50, 100--they're not really favorites, are they? We know our favorite Web addresses by heart. It's much easier to open a dialogue box and type Amazon corn than it is to navigate a series of menus. But on those days when even typing is a hassle, there's yet another option for gaining quick access to the sites you use every day--your favorite favorites.

The tool of which I speak is IE's Links bar. Now, before you say that you don't have a Links bar, I assure you that you do. It's tucked away to the right of the Address bar. Problem is, unless you adjust the width of the Address bar, you'll never see the links. First, go to View, then Toolbars, and make sure that the Links bar is checked. Next, drag the links bar below the Location bar. That will give you a full bar to work with and reveal a group of default buttons.

Buttons can be added to the toolbar by clicking on a Webpage's icon--either in the Location bar, from your list of favorites, or from your desktop--and then dragging it to the desired location on the bar. Once added, buttons can be renamed (right-click on button, select Rename). To remove a button from the toolbar, right-click on the button and select Delete.

Netscape users (4.X and higher) have a similar feature called the Personal Toolbar. Just drag the location button to the toolbar to create the shortcut.

GURL Power

Microsoft just can't catch a break with its .NET platform. Derided by the press for early security and privacy issues, the platform, which is designed to allow users to access programs online via a wide array of devices, is even taking it on the chin from teenage girls. A recent Reuters report states that someone claiming to be a 17-year-old girl has created a new virus that targets the .NET platform.

Sent to Sophos, a UK-based computer security company, this worm is the product of a budding social conscience. Going by the handle "Gigabyte," the virus's creator stated in her message to Sophos that the virus is intended to be a statement against sexism in the male-dominated, anti-virus industry and against the perceived lack of female virus writers.

Written in C-sharp, the programming language used on the .NET platforms, the worm spreads via Outlook email and has the subject line, "Important: Windows update." Once the virus infects a computer, it determines whether the computer has .NET technology installed. If so, it then targets certain executable files.

Don't worry, the virus hasn't been "released into the wild," as they say. Its creator was just trying to make a point. What that point is, however, isn't clear. Did anyone really doubt that women could create computer viruses ably?