

Ask HN: Should email providers add "UNSEND"? - rokhayakebe

No matter how  careful you are, there have been a couple of times when you wish you could "Unsend" that email to your coworker, your girlfriend, your client......Instead of asking us to be more diligent shouldn't email providers (gmail)add an "Unsend" button? Or if this in fact exists would you forgive my lack of knowledge and please let me know where it is hidden?
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ConradHex
Outlook has this sort of thing, but the receiver sees the notification and has
to accept it. Which is always a clear sign to me that someone sent something
out and then thought better of it, so I always look extra-closely at the email
in question.

Anyway, if people didn't accidentally send stuff like this, cnn.com and other
mainstream media couldn't write an article about it every 6 months.

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cchooper
Some clients (e.g. Outlook) let you put a delay on your outgoing email, so you
can cancel it if you change your mind in time.

And the email recall feature of Outlook/Exchange is also quite good. It even
tells you how many emails couldn't be recalled (because people have already
read them). It will only work within an organisation though, as it is a
feature of the Exchange server.

~~~
pasbesoin
I'd welcome an outbound mail queue in gmail (or whatever web mail provider is
your favorite). Preferably one with some configuration options. In my case, I
might have a default delay of 2 minutes or so. For more uncertain messages, I
might bump their individual delay out to some hours.

This allows for alteration of a message that has not yet made it off the
queue. But it has the advantage over e.g. a draft message in that, if
circumstances do not change, no further action is required.

If a queued email bothers you enough, you can go back in and change it. But
you don't have to remember the things that end up not bothering you; they will
be sent after their delay expires. This works in concert with the natural flow
of your attention, rather than requiring you to keep track of and follow up on
draft emails whose topics your mind has decided it is no longer worried about.

It can also be used to email yourself, or others, reminders at a pre-
determined time.

I imagine one reason gmail, for example, does not add such a feature is all
the potential avenues of abuse. Accounts set up with to spam without further
sign on, or to harass someone else. Or just the person who ueber-automates
every moment of their day with umpteen bazillion delayed messages in the
latest GTD meme. Google may have better uses for its electrons.

Plus... If its automated, you're not looking at ads while it's sent.

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qhoxie
While it's not impossible, email just does not work that way. Email has no
sense of state on the other end of a message. The extent of the feedback it
gets is a bounce that may or may not have a descriptive error attached to it.
Some systems could implement a recall option (Exchange may allow this, but I'm
far from an expert) if the accounts are housed in the same system, but it is
rarely done as it is against the stateless aspect. Email as a protocol(s) is
very simplistic, which is why spam and spoofing are so prevalent. There is
little room to have complex extensions on top of the existing system.

If, say, gmail implemented this, it would likely require an ACL from the
receiving user that specified senders that were allowed to recall.

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hansmoleman
At one time or another, we've all accidentally sent an e-mail, probably by
invoking the keyboard shortcut.

I would definitely be waiting to have my emails delayed a few seconds if Gmail
would momentarily display an Undo option. This would mean that the email
wouldn't even be sent until after the Undo option expired, so we wouldn't need
to worry about the email protocol.

~~~
hernan7
Yes, having "unsend" as part of the mail client functionality is the way to
go.

Maybe the "send the message right now this exact millisecond" function should
require an extra step from the user. And the default action should be to
enqueue the outgoing messages and wait for N seconds/minutes before sending
them.

And add some rule-based "are you sure you want to send this?" function since
you are at it.

~~~
qhoxie
We are talking about a completely different thing now. Adding a delay or an
_Are you sure?_ confirmation is trivial but hardly solves the issue of
regretting sending something intentionally.

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noodle
in my opinion, no. it raises a lot of concerns about misuse.

