Self-Destructing Messages Now a Reality

It’s often been said that what happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet…forever. Whether it’s a blog post that has been “deleted” or an e-mail that has been sent, the originating content creator has little power to make things disappear. Until now.

The fine folks at the University of Washington have invented a new system known as “Vanish” that places a time limit on posted messages. Whether it’s Web-based e-mail, a chat session or social networking page, Vanish has the potential to wipe the slate clean.

Using the same formula enabled by peer-to-peer networks for media sharing, your message is encrypted and broken into dozens of parts. Once a piece of the puzzle is removed, the entire message is rendered inaccessible.

A message sent by Vanish will appear scrambled until the recipient chooses to view it.

You can currently try Vanish as a free download, but be warned, bot the sender and recipient must have the download and corresponding Firefox add-on.