Coming to an in-box near you: disappearing e-mail?

Computerworld - If you read an e-mail message and then it disappears, did it ever really exist? Emerging technology might soon make that more than an existential question.

A handful of small software manufacturers is now selling digital rights management software for e-mail, allowing users to decide how long messages remain on their desktops, whether they can be forwarded or copied and even whether e-mails can be recalled after they've been sent and opened.

The ability to retrieve or revise already-opened messages is available only from vendors such as Atabok Inc. in Newton, Mass., and Authentica Inc. in Waltham, Mass., although others such as Disappearing Inc. in San Francisco now provide stored encryption keys that expire when the user specifies.

But major vendors are slated to release programs allowing e-mail users to do much the same thing. Lotus Development Corp. this year included limited digital rights management features in its Notes software, letting an e-mail sender set permissions that block the recipient from forwarding or printing a message. And Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook 2002 lets the sender retrieve mail after it has been sent.

Michelle Sanger, technology manager at Landor Associates, a corporate branding firm in San Francisco, said she currently uses Atabok to track e-mail messages. For her, owning a message is less important than being able to track it. "When the client pays us to create a design, they own it," she said. Being sure a document has arrived on a client's desktop is a priority, she said, and using Atabok is cheaper than other solutions.

"It's so easy to rely on FedEx," she said. "We're trying to get away from unnecessary costs."

Most people think about Napster and audio files when they consider digital rights management, according to analyst Joshua Duhl at IDC in Framingham, Mass. But the potential use for such software is greater in the messaging environment because of the popularity of e-mail on the Internet, he said.

There are also business and legal reasons for protecting message data. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, vulnerable intellectual property, legal protection and privacy are among the top concerns likely to spur the adoption of digital rights management software in e-mail systems, Duhl said.

David Ferris, president of Ferris Research in San Francisco, agreed on the need for such software but noted that it's only now beginning to emerge in the marketplace.

"It's still very early days for them all," he said, adding that adoption has so far been hindered because the software is so new and, in some