Burn Note: The Untraceable, Read Once Email

Ever wanted the email version of the self-destructing mission tapes from Mission Impossible? That's sort of the idea behind Burn Note, an online communication service meant for private encrypted and time sensitive communication. Send our your top secret message and it's immediately erased from being read ever again after received/opened...

All communication on Burn Note can be viewed only once. Burn Notes are destroyed immediately after they have been viewed by the recipient and completely extinguished from the Burn Note servers. Burn Notes are never stored in the recipient's email and once read it is impossible for anyone to retrieve them.

Further information about the privacy and technical operations of Burn Note are available on their site, outlining the "how", "what" "when" and "where" of any note created/read.

Comments (3)

I feel like a major flaw in this idea is that the end reader could always screen capture the msg and then have the ability to share it outside of its intended audience.

At least check it out first... looks like they thought of that. From the FAQ:

Can the recipient take a screenshot of the contents of a Burn Note?
By default Burn Notes are created with the "Read out" display option which prevents the recipient from taking a screenshot of the entire note. It does this by breaking the note contents into short phrases and displaying them one at a time. It would require many precisely-timed screenshots to capture a note that uses this display option. Furthermore, the result would be a collection of screenshots which are not proveably related instead of a single coherent image.

The "Keyhole" display option also prevents screenshots of the entire note by only allowing the recipient to view a small portion of the note in the "keyhole" area. The mouse button must be held down to keep the keyhole open which makes taking screenshots require more finger coordination. Similar to the "Read out" option, the result would be a collection of screenshots instead of a single image. Additionally the "Keyhole" option prevents people who are physically near the recipient from easily reading the note contents.

To allow the recipient to take a screenshot of the note contents use the "Plain text" display option.

Why not just meet at the confluence of hi and lo tech and simply take out your smart phone and take a picture of the screen? For all the Mission Impossible glam, this seems like a great idea that in these days can't be readily accomplished.