"This Email Will Self Destruct"
thisemailwillselfdestruct.comHow? Will messages really disappear out of inboxes? Or is it just an embedded image that gets deleted from the server eventually?
There are several techniques, some of them are:
* Show in a frame on the company's server
* Sends JavaScript code that retrieves the message from the server
* Sends an ActiveX / Java / Flash client that displays the message from the server and resists attempts to copy/paste
* Sends the file with DRM, and a client that would enforce the DRM rules
Being that the website uses flash on its first page, I would hazard a guess that a Flash client is involved. I don't like to login to these sites with credentials from other sites, especially if I only want a bit of information.
By the way the idea isn't new by any stretch of the word. http://readnotify.com have been at it for years.
[edited for formatting]
Or an iframe, or javascript that retrieves data from a server. Fun idea, but more trouble than it's worth, given how mail clients could bork a complicated implementation.
The same technique might be useful for emails that change over time. Hmmm!