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Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

sendpluto.com

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Re: Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

#21

Post by davycro »

lutusp wrote: post #2

The linked article claims that an e-mail can be deleted from the recipient's email in-box, regardless of whether the recipient is running a Pluto client. Earth to Pluto ... assuming the received e-mail is a classic plain-text e-mail, that's impossible. Either the recipient is running a Pluto-compliant client, in which case the claim is true, or the recipient is not running a Pluto-compliant client, in which case the…

I just tested this service with gmail and it did in fact work. Pluto sends an image that contains the body of the message. After about 30 seconds the image is replaced with another that says "this message has expired."

A very remarkable hack! Especially since Gmail caches images on their own proxy servers. I wonder how long until Google finds a way to prevent this?

Here's some background information about the founders. One is a CS grad from Stanford, and former Google employee-- http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/4/2/law-school-email-...

Re: Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

#23

Post by eli »

huhtenberg wrote: post #14

The only way all claimed features can work is if the email body remains on their servers at all times. I.e. they send some sort of wrapper that either iframes the content or talks to the Pluto backend in some other form or fashion. Needless to say - good luck with that!

No iframes in email. I bet it's rendered as an image.

Either way, you're trusting them with the contents of a message that, by definition, you kinda wanted to keep private.

Re: Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

#24

Post by ceejayoz »

davycro wrote: post #21
lutusp wrote: post #2

The linked article claims that an e-mail can be deleted from the recipient's email in-box, regardless of whether the recipient is running a Pluto client. Earth to Pluto ... assuming the received e-mail is a classic plain-text e-mail, that's impossible. Either the recipient is running a Pluto-compliant client, in which case the claim is true, or the recipient is not running a Pluto-compliant client, in which case the…

I just tested this service with gmail and it did in fact work. Pluto sends an image that contains the body of the message. After about 30 seconds the image is replaced with another that says "this message has expired." A very remarkable hack! Especially since Gmail caches images on their own proxy servers. I wonder how long until Google finds a way to prevent this? Here's some background information about the founder…

> A very remarkable hack! Especially since Gmail caches images on their own proxy servers. I wonder how long until Google finds a way to prevent this?

I don't think they cache. It's more an issue of privacy, HTTPS assets, malware checking, etc.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.htm...

Re: Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

#26

Post by jgalt212 »

eli wrote: post #23
huhtenberg wrote: post #14

The only way all claimed features can work is if the email body remains on their servers at all times. I.e. they send some sort of wrapper that either iframes the content or talks to the Pluto backend in some other form or fashion. Needless to say - good luck with that!

No iframes in email. I bet it's rendered as an image. Either way, you're trusting them with the contents of a message that, by definition, you kinda wanted to keep private.

I guess so, but that's the same situation as it is with any other email provider (yahoo, gmail, etc). The difference here is that you are only trusting Pluto. With other providers, you are trusting the provider and all recipients, whether they are an intended recipient or not.

In short, there is no free lunch, but this seems like a decent solution as you only have to trust one entity. Its up to us (potential users) to decide to trust them or not.

Re: Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

#27

Post by teacup50 »

h2s wrote: post #22

Worth bearing in mind that this is effectively DRM for email, with all the negative connotations that DRM brings.

It's already bad enough that people put dropbox links in their e-mails, negating the value of long-term e-mail archiving.

It's extremely useful to be able to go back in time and have full conversation history, including associated resources.

Re: Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

#28

Post by chimeracoder »

teacup50 wrote: post #27
h2s wrote: post #22

Worth bearing in mind that this is effectively DRM for email, with all the negative connotations that DRM brings.

It's already bad enough that people put dropbox links in their e-mails, negating the value of long-term e-mail archiving. It's extremely useful to be able to go back in time and have full conversation history, including associated resources.

While I agree with this, I find it equally annoying when people send 3MB attachments as emails (and then keep resending them for every email in the conversation!).

It would be nice if a Dropbox link included a hash of the file, functioning more as a magnet link than a URL (emphasis on the "L - Locator" in "URL").

Re: Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

#29

Post by mantrax4 »

davycro wrote: post #21
lutusp wrote: post #2

The linked article claims that an e-mail can be deleted from the recipient's email in-box, regardless of whether the recipient is running a Pluto client. Earth to Pluto ... assuming the received e-mail is a classic plain-text e-mail, that's impossible. Either the recipient is running a Pluto-compliant client, in which case the claim is true, or the recipient is not running a Pluto-compliant client, in which case the…

I just tested this service with gmail and it did in fact work. Pluto sends an image that contains the body of the message. After about 30 seconds the image is replaced with another that says "this message has expired." A very remarkable hack! Especially since Gmail caches images on their own proxy servers. I wonder how long until Google finds a way to prevent this? Here's some background information about the founder…

An image. Excuse me, but that's not a remarkable hack, that's just B.S. hack, which can't be fairly called sending an "email".

Re: Pluto Mail – Unsend Emails

#30

Post by claudius »

nkrba wrote: post #13

This sounds great. Maybe 2014 will be the (attempted) return of privacy. Anonymous messaging, expiring emails, pseudonymous payments, etc.

Tunneling your email through yet another service which then converts it into an image hosted by that service and keeps track of when that image was requested over public internet is not my definition of ‘privacy’.

If you need expiring emails, you also need some way to expire people’s memories and I’d rather not communicate with you in that case.

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