Why Dmail Self-destructing Messages on @Blackberry, @Samsung and @Gmail @BBM

I'm sure many Jamaicans who watched the Movie Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation fully appreciates the idea of a good self-destructing message. Especially if the mission leads you to doing this!

Well, I've got real News for you, dear reader; you can actually send self-destructing messages using a Google Chrome extension called Dmail as explained in the article “Send self-destructing Gmail messages with Dmail”, published July 28, 2015 by Matt Elliott, CNET News. 

Dmail is the brainchild of the same company that created the social bookmarking service Delicious as noted in the article “Now You Can Make That Embarrassing Email You Sent Self-Destruct”, published July 24, 2015 by Victor Luckerson, TIME.

Dmail vs Gmail Undo Send – Remote Self-Encrypting email within Gmail

Their eventual plans for Dmail extends not just to email but also to any form of messaging, such as word documents and PDF that can self-destruct

To be fair, Gmail had recently rolled out a feature called Undo Send that really just adds a thirty (30) second delay as pointed out in the article “Gmail messages can now self-destruct”, published 24.07.2015 By Ananya Bhattacharya, CNN Money. 

All so that you can make up your mind to send the email or not as explained in my MICO Wars blog article entitled “How to enable Gmail’s Undo Send and How to Unsend an Email”.

But that doesn’t erase the email after it has been sent like a Snapchat message as described in my blog article entitled “@Facebook gets Mission Impossible serious with Poke as the @Snapchat bringing “Sexting” back”.

With this latest Google Chrome Extension you can do just that with a little bit of data encryption thrown in as well.

Dmail self-destructing Messages - How this message will self-encrypt weeks later

Once you install Dmail in your Google Chrome browser, it install as additional line in your Compose window.

This creates a toggle switch which allows you to not only enable or disable the self-destruct mode, which is really just encrypting your email, but also set how long it'll take to self-destruct:

1.      Never

2.      In 1 hour

3.      In 1 day

4.      In 1 week

Your recipient doesn’t have to have Dmail installed in order to read your encrypted emails as noted in the article “Gmail users can now self-destruct sent emails using Dmail Chrome extension”, published July 28, 2015 By Rahul R, International Business Times albeit they'll be able to read your encrypted emails straight within Gmail.

Recipients who don't have Dmail installed will receive a message telling them that they’ve just received an encrypted message via Dmail. They are then presented with the option to click a View Message button that opens your email in a Chrome tab.

But to me the coolest feature is the ability to remotely self-destruct previous sent emails using Dmail:

1.      Click All Dmails at the top of your Gmail inbox

2.      View a list or your emails sent with Dmail

3.      Open email you want to remotely self-destruct

4.      Press a Revoke Email button to remotely self-destruct

Also, this doesn’t really cause your recipients email to blow up but rather revokes their access to the decrypted version of the email. After all, email can't really explode, as albeit a nice idea, that'd be criminal.

Rather, the recipient is actually sent an unencrypted email; the Revoke Email Button merely removes their ability to read the email by re-encrypting the message.

Remote Deleting Gmail Messages – Why a Blackberry, Samsung and Gmail BBM Timed and Retracted Messages might be possible

Too bad they can STILL read the body of the message, which then suggest that you have to be a bit more careful in what you write in the header.

Also the email STILL registers as being sent to the recipient, meaning your manager will STILL be asking what you sent and why you sent it as argue in the article “Get self-destructing Gmail emails with Dmail”, published July 27, 2015 by James Vincent, The Verge.

This suggests that if Dmail becomes popular, Google may soon begin to charge an actual service to delete emails.

This would be similar to the Blackberry Messenger currently does with BBM (Blackberry Messenger) Timed and Retracted Messages as reported in my blog article entitled  “@BBM's Timed and Retracted Messages - How to BBM's Improved HD Pictures, BBM Sticker and BBM Music Discovery prevent @Snapchat Nude pictures”. 

Heck, Google and Blackberry may even from a partnership to roll out this service, uniting Blackberry with their “frenemy” to make sure email are nice, secure but still retractable, for a monthly free for Professional grade accounts!

Quite possible, as they’ve already partnered with Samsung and Blackberry to integrate BES12 level security into Google Android 5.0 Lollipop and Samsung KNOX as mentioned in my blog article entitled “AnyConnect for Samsung Knox is a Cisco Systems partnership for Secure VPN Communications”.

Still, if you feel like playing the Spy and encrypting sensitive information over email that you don't want hanging around and you’re not into Snapchat, then this is the best option.

Oh, one more thing! This message will self-destruct in 10 seconds......Good luck using Dmail!

Here’s the link:

Dmail Google Chrome Extension