Saturday, July 25, 2015

UnSend.it Lets You Unsend Or Edit Emails You Wish You Didn’t Send

UnSend.it Lets You Unsend Or Edit Emails You Wish You Didn’t Send

Only if there were few unpleasant things than that sinking feeling I experience after accidentally sending unintended e-mail to unintended recipients. One fatal click can make the next day at School/College/Work incredibly awkward!

Gmail has an “unsend” feature, but it’s only available for a few seconds and, of course, restricted to e-mails that travel through Google servers. What if you don’t realize your mistake until later, or what if you’re an Outlook user? UnSend.it is here to help. Apparently.

Now UnSend.it lets you unsend or edit emails and attachments minutes, hours or days after you sent them. It can delete all traces of the unwanted email UnSend.it also notifies you when the recipient opens your email. How does it work? As UnSend.it points out, "Our SMTP server is where the magic happens!"

With a user base of 10,00 active users unSend.it is doing an amazing job. Let see how it works:

Using the service is pretty quick and easy. It took me less than five minutes to set up my account and start sending emails from my Outlook account via UnSend.it servers.

Test 1: unSend.it has Self Destruct Feature!
Test 2: Self Destructed email!
 The website has a step-by-step guide to setup your account and get started. You can use UnSend.it from their own dashboard via their website (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo! Inc. etc.)

When you send an email via UnSend.it, it is converted into an image and embedded in the email body. It means what you are actually doing is creating a JPEG image file of whatever text you have typed. 

Pictures embedded in e-mails are fetched from a server remotely, a function UnSend.it takes full advantage of. When you send an e-mail through the service, you’re really creating an image file of whatever text you’ve typed –unSend.it converts your message into a JPEG and embeds it in the e-mail body. That allows you, of course, to “unsend” a message by generating a new image.

Test 2: Unsend Feature! 
Test 2 : Confirm unSend!

Test 2: The mail isn't visible now!
 UnSend.it takes the concept to its logical limit, allowing you to edit the message, too. And the service even injects tracking code into the images, allowing you to see whether or not they’ve been read.

But, There's One Problem!

Many inboxes are set to block images by default, a configuration many recipients won’t be willing or able to toggle. And sending image-based e-mails instead of text, not to mention e-mails with a conspicous, unremovable signature advertising UnSend.it as “Regret-Free Emailing,” might make your motives understandably suspect. Though you can upgrade your account and remove the Advertising.

UnSend.it has tried to address this issue. When I sent an email using UnSend.it to my Gmail account that blocks images, it shows a notification, "If you don't see the message click "Display images" or Click here [link removed] to view the text version."

There's one more problem, The recipient could still see the email in their inbox along with the subject line. However, all content from the body of the email, including attachments, are deleted.

In UnSend.it’s defense, using the website shouldn’t technically be a requirement. A step-by-step guide outlines how to send e-mail from a Outlook account throughUnSend.it servers, but I wasn’t able to get it working after multiple attempts.

UnSend.it claims to use "end-to-end encryption" and promises to provide the most secure server technology. Another cool feature of UnSend.it is the self-destruct option. It allows emails to disappear after the recipient reads the email. Overall, UnSend.it has a lot of features that a lot of people would find useful, including me!

Undeniably the idea is a good one, if not very original, but honestly, UnSend.it does quite manage to live up to the promise of preventing the awkwardness!
Until the emergence of a fully functional “unsending” service, I personally suggest triple-checking the sender field on your next particularly sensitive e-mail for good measure.

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