When I grew up, if you wrote something embarrassing, you'd just erase it, tear up the paper and toss it. However, deleting an embarrassing message in our digital age isn't so easy.
If you've every posted a message that you couldn't delete, you know that stomach turning feeling. That 'uh oh' response when you realized that it was gone and that blowback was coming. Well, hang on to your nerves, you just might be in luck should that ever happen again.
Thanks to some computer scientists at the University of Washington, that message, with the help of software called 'Vanish', just might be what the computer doctor ordered. This self-destructing data will allow the user to delete that message and be saved from the embarrassment of posting something in haste or during a less-than-sober moment.
Now, before you get too excited, even with this software, this doesn't mean that that message will disappear forever. Someone could have copied your message via screenshots or even printed out. Interestingly enough, other computer scientists came up with software called 'Unvanish' to counter the Vanish software. So let the battle begin.
But just pondering the ability to have your data self-destruct is a quite interesting. Kinda James Bondish stuff. However, we'll need to rethink this if the bad guys get access.
