If the recipient's email client automatically downloads the image the first time and makes it always-available to the user, wouldn't that break GhostMail's promise? While Gmail/Hotmail/etc. may not do this now, is there any technical (even an extension) reason they can't? I simply don't see how, even using a 3rd party, you can prevent somebody from holding on to the message forever. In addition, you cannot assume the content is the most important part of the message; all the email headers will exist in perpetuity, and they'll always know you sent them something (if, in the future, GhostMail wanted to do an Undo Send type feature).
Why do people opt to talk on the phone or use off-the-record gchat instead of send something over email? In both cases, the conversation can still be stored, but the point is to use a communication method for which there is no automatic storage mechanism. You trust your recipient not to record all your phone calls or copy and paste all of your off-the-record gchats, but you just don't want a copy of your messages sitting in their inbox.
As far as your comment on the headers, you're absolutely right. There will always be a record that you sent some message to your recipient at a particular time with a particular subject. However, the details of the message itself are never contained within the headers.
Also, with GhostMail, you already have the ability to "undo send". You can just go into your "sent" folder and view your message before your recipient views it, rendering the message unreadable.
I'd agree that there are use cases where it works. For example: if I wanted to send my roommate a password over email, this would be great because the message content would be gone, and I don't care about headers and timestamps. But if I'm sending some secrets, I wouldn't want any record that it was even communicated.
Comments
If the recipient's email client automatically downloads the image the first time and makes it always-available to the user, wouldn't that break GhostMail's promise? While Gmail/Hotmail/etc. may not do this now, is there any technical (even an extension) reason they can't? I simply don't see how, even using a 3rd party, you can prevent somebody from holding on to the message forever. In addition, you cannot assume the content is the most important part of the message; all the email headers will exist in perpetuity, and they'll always know you sent them something (if, in the future, GhostMail wanted to do an Undo Send type feature).
Why do people opt to talk on the phone or use off-the-record gchat instead of send something over email? In both cases, the conversation can still be stored, but the point is to use a communication method for which there is no automatic storage mechanism. You trust your recipient not to record all your phone calls or copy and paste all of your off-the-record gchats, but you just don't want a copy of your messages sitting in their inbox.
As far as your comment on the headers, you're absolutely right. There will always be a record that you sent some message to your recipient at a particular time with a particular subject. However, the details of the message itself are never contained within the headers.
Also, with GhostMail, you already have the ability to "undo send". You can just go into your "sent" folder and view your message before your recipient views it, rendering the message unreadable.
I'd agree that there are use cases where it works. For example: if I wanted to send my roommate a password over email, this would be great because the message content would be gone, and I don't care about headers and timestamps. But if I'm sending some secrets, I wouldn't want any record that it was even communicated.