

Show HN: UnSend.it Beta, modify / unsend any email after it's been sent - lepunk
https://unsend.it/

======
lepunk
here is a video of how it works (sorry about the audio quality)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLYYh_fuCE8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLYYh_fuCE8)

~~~
BPm
Very very impressive. I am very curious how you do it. What about privacy by
the way?

~~~
lepunk
Thanks, its only in beta so its not perfect but getting there

bramgg is right in his comment. we are using images to display the text. when
the user edits / "unsends" and email we simply re-render the image.

bramgg is also right about gmail's image caching however we found a way around
it

as for the privacy: we will upload our policy soon (it's being reviewed atm).
but simply put: \- we do not ever sell your data to 3rd party \- all of the
email info are stored heavily encrypted on our servers \- the images are
behind a secure proxy \- once you delete an email it completely removed from
our servers

------
BPm
how is it done?

~~~
bramgg
I have no affiliation with the product, but since the email protocol obviously
doesn't actually allow altering emails after they've been sent, I can tell you
the only two ways something like this could operate.

1) The email isn't actually sent when you click send. There's a delay where
you can go back and edit/delete it. This is effectively the same as saving an
email as a draft and then having it auto-send five minutes later.

2) The email is actually just text on an external image or on some external
web page visible through an iFrame. Neither of these really work because
modern day email services like Gmail cache images and pass them through their
own servers. Most email clients also block iFrames by default.

Based on their website I assume UnSend.it uses one of number 2. An interesting
hack and definitely Hacker News worthy, but in practice I don't think it can
be reliable.

There is also always the possibility that I'm wrong and there's a secret
method #3, but I really doubt that.

~~~
BPm
#2 is an interesting hack indeed. But from the demo video (posted in a
different comment), it also works for attachment so I don't think he is using
this method.

Edit: I signed up and you were right. He uses a remote image. It works when I
email using the unsend.it web app but doesn't work if I send it through the
Gmail website so I couldn't test the attachment.

