Personal online data to have expiry date

WASHINGTON, US: Researchers at University of Washington have created of a tool that can enable electronic communications like e-mail, Facebook posts and chat messages to automatically self-destruct after a set time period, reports ANI.

According to the researchers the prototype system called Vanish can make online personal data irretrievable from all websites, inboxes, outboxes, backup sites, and home computers.

They say that even the sender will not be able to retrieve the data, once it gets vanished.

"If you care about privacy, the Internet today is a very scary place. If people understood the implications of where and how their e-mail is stored, they might be more careful or not use it as often," said UW computer scientist Tadayoshi Kohno.

The research team say that Vanish can place a time limit on text uploaded to any Web service through a Web browser, after which any document will self-destruct.

"When you send out a sensitive e-mail to a few friends you have no idea where that e-mail is going to end up. For instance, your friend could lose her laptop or cell phone, her data could be exposed by malware or a hacker, or a subpoena could require your e-mail service to reveal your messages. If you want to ensure that your message never gets out, how do you do that?" said doctoral student Roxana Geambasu, a co-author on the study paper, to be presented at the Usenix Security Symposium, which runs in Montreal from August 10 to 14.