7/22/2009 PERMALINK
This article will self-destruct after you have read it

Until now, computers have made it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview. A lost cell phone can expose personal photos or text messages. A legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating, inconvenient or just embarrassing details from the past. The University of Washington has developed a way to make cloud information expire after a set time period. Not even the sender can retrieve them. "If you care about privacy, the Internet today is a very scary place," said UW computer scientist Tadayoshi Kohno. The team of UW computer scientists developed a prototype system called Vanish that can place a time limit on text uploaded to any Web service through a Web browser. After a set time text written using Vanish will, in essence, self-destruct.