Email - 1on1 to reduce cyberliability

Lawyers have downplayed hopes that the launch of a service featuring self-destructing emails will allow network managers to avoid the risk of cyberliability.

Global Market Research (GMR) last week launched its 1on1 email service.

Taking a leaf from Mission Impossible, the company's 'autoshredder' can delete messages sent by the service after a predefined set period. The package also prevents recipients from cutting and pasting from received emails.

Legal experts argued that this could help guard against ill-judged words in emails coming back to haunt companies in court - as happened to Microsoft during its long-running battle with the Department of Justice.

Sarah Harrop, senior solicitor for IT litigation at law firm Manches, said the service could ensure that the trail of a potentially embarrassing or confidential email is lost and so eliminate incriminating evidence. "Email is commonly admitted as evidence in court, either as a printout or on a disk," she warned.

However, she added that self-destructing emails could be a double-edged legal sword because automatic removal of email evidence could undermine a company's legal credibility and so prove to be damaging.

Steve Webb, director of marketing for security integrator Integralis, doubted the usefulness of having important data self-destruct: "I don't see the point of this service. If such information were confidential or valuable, then presumably you would want to keep it and not delete it."

He added: "This tool could be used for spam purposes. It might be useful to have a message that advertises something and then deletes itself."

www.1on1mail.com.