A startup wants to make your e-mails vanish forever — in a good way.
Confidential CC has developed an app that lets users send self-destructing messages from whatever e-mail accounts they fancy.
Unlike rival apps dedicated to sending messages or images that vanish after being viewed, Confidential CC is designed to work with existing e-mail accounts, such as Gmail and Outlook.
“You receive all your e-mail like usual, we just add a new address line that lets you send a CCC self-destruct e-mail,” company cofounder Warren Barthes said at the Collision technology conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
The Confidential CC app for iPhones and other Apple mobile devices is available on the App Store, and is to become fully functional on May 21. Versions for Android devices and desktop computers are also planned.
Confidential CC serves as a central hub on a smartphone or tablet to manage e-mail accounts. After firing up the app, users log into their e-mail accounts as they normally would, the former French telecom executive showed.
A “CCC” address line appears below the “BCC” box e-mail users are accustomed to seeing.
CCC messages cannot be printed, forwarded or saved, and vanish after being closed. They are also encrypted from end-to-end.
To thwart those who might think to take a picture of an ephemeral e-mail, identities of senders and recipients are not displayed simultaneously, and text in messages shifts from blurred to focused as readers scroll through.
“We give power to the sender,” said Barthes, who joined cofounder Rachel Tigges in starting Confidential CC about three years ago after moving from France to New York.
The Confidential application will be free at the outset, with the startup intent on refining it before looking to money-making methods, such as charging for downloads or licensing service to banks or other companies.
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