AT&T seeks to patent self-destructing email

StaffAtlanta Business Chronicle

AT&T is seeking to patent self-destructing email.

A U.S. patent application by AT&T that was made public today notes that once you send an email, you can't control what's done with it: it can be forwarded, printed, saved or copied.

"Conventional e-mail systems may also be inappropriate for sending confidential or proprietary information because these systems do not allow the sender of an e-mail message to control the lifespan of the e-mail message," the patent application notes. "E-mail messages may, therefore, languish in a recipient's e-mail 'in-box' or on an e-mail server computer for months or even years. Some e-mail systems will allow an e-mail recipient to specify that messages should be deleted after a certain amount of time. However, these systems do not allow the sender to specify a time for destruction of the sent e-mail message. Therefore, an e-mail sender cannot be certain that a sent e-mail message containing time sensitive information will ever be deleted."

AT&T says its new technology can create self-destructing e-mail messages that allows a user to specify a time for the destruction of a sent e-mail message and that will destroy all instances of the e-mail message when the specified time arrives. It also can restrict the number and type of things that may be done to a sent e-mail message, thereby restricting the ability of a recipient to replicate it.

"The e-mail message will be destroyed by the e-mail client application whether or not the message has been read," the patent application says. "Alternatively, if the e-mail message specifies that it should be deleted after it has been read, the e-mail client application will destroy the e-mail message once it has been opened and closed by the recipient. All instances of the e-mail message are deleted from the recipient's computer."