Wih Messenger Revamp, Yahoo Joins the 'Unsend' Trend (thestack.com) 49
An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo has announced a new version of its almost-mothballed Messenger app, which, in addition to new integration with Flickr and Tumblr images, now permits users to 'unsend' messages at any time, a facility which Viber added last week. The ability to erase sent communication has been a dream of business and personal users for many years, and if messaging eclipses email, it seems likely to become a reality.
nice title (Score:2, Informative)
some real editing work going on here
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Wow ... (Score:5, Funny)
I swoon over the innovation here, and hereby retract my previous assertions Yahoo is growing irrelevant and pointless.
Adding a feature to a product which TFS calls "almost-mothballed", that's sure to save the company!!
My nipples crinkle in admiration.
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unsend doesn't exist after delivery (Score:5, Insightful)
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that my client ignores
The thing about messaging is you are generally locked into a client; so it'll no longer be up to you whether or not you use a client that ignores it or not.
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I connect to yahoo's servers using Pidgin. I imagine Trillian also works. I imagine the client will either ignore the unsend, or give a bolded notification "The user attempted to unsend the prior message".
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Yeah, and if Yahoo care an iota they can block trillian and pidgin trivially. All it takes is a few certificates; and 3rd party clients are rendered useless.
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Yeah, and if Yahoo care an iota they can block trillian and pidgin trivially. All it takes is a few certificates; and 3rd party clients are rendered useless.
And then next to go will be there customers. Good luck with that strategy...
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Yeah, because a significant proportion of instant messenger users using Yahoo messenger are using 3rd party clients like pidgin and trillian.
Wait, are you trolling me?
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I thought all the IM services had changed their protocols so that open-source applications like Pidgin wouldn't work any more.
Surely Yahoo would do this here if they haven't already.
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It depends if your email client uses IMAP instead of POP.
The entire point of IMAP is that if you delete/read/change a message on one of your client programs, it will do the same on your other client programs. IMAP is actually quite handy for users who read their email on more than one device.
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screen cap
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Only works if you have the presence of mind to take one, and you do so before the un-send goes through.
In other words, yes, screen cap works, and always will because you can't display someone to something and simultaneously prevent them from seeing it or recording it. Even if it takes another phone taking a picture... it will be doable.
But how many times are people going to miss that window of opportunity before something gets 'unsent' ?
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The thing about messaging is you are generally locked into a client; so it'll no longer be up to you whether or not you use a client that ignores it or not.
Except I don't know anyone that uses Yahoo for anything, so it won't be a problem. And if my IM provider tried such a thing, I'd simply change providers.
Been nice knowing you Yahoo, whatever it is you do these days...
I wrote an app that Un-deletes anything I receive (Score:2)
Re:I wrote an app that Un-deletes anything I recei (Score:4, Insightful)
Why doesn't em grow a thicker skin?
Because em would grow too heavy, and then how could em dash?
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Because I don't like it when people delete incriminating/vicious things they said to em.
On a more serious note, if grandma has a yahoo email account, you guys better start explaining the new feature to her.
It would be unfortunate if she believed that a Nigerian prince can successfully predict the winning lottery number, or the outcome of horse races.
How young is slashdot to not remember AOL? (Score:3)
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AOL had unsend. It had unsend because everything was under their control. As far as I can tell it's the only way to do unsend
Correction: There is no way to unsend if the recipient already read it.
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If the client application is closed-source and is the only option, then it's not hard for the service to determine if the recipient has read the message yet or not (unless they just leave it open all the time of course, I mean if they're logged off). The client app could even see if the window was minimized or obscured.
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How young is slashdot not to remember AOL Uhrm this slashdot beta, still in the larval stage, A-OLd man, and its editors wear their slacks with their underwear showing, not their butt-cracks.
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The conservatives are the ones that usually have a lot more kids.
Unsend easy to defeat (Score:2)
Unsend is easy to defeat, assuming someone reads it before you unsend it. Simply take a screenshot and your message will live on. In fact, it might become standard practice to refer to screenshots of messages in case someone unsends the message and then tries claiming they never said it.
(Yes, screenshots can be faked, but it will be some proof that the message happened.)
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If you need to take a screenshot of everything you get to prove you got it ... you either need a better job or better friends.
Constantly having to document that something happened means you're in a pretty hostile situation.
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It isn't about jobs or friends. Sometimes it is about trolls and criminals. If a dirtbag sends my under age daughter a dick pic, it is going to get screen capped and sent to the police. Undelete just give false sense of security.
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It isn't about jobs or friends. Sometimes it is about trolls and criminals. If a dirtbag sends my under age daughter a dick pic, it is going to get screen capped and sent to the police. Undelete just give false sense of security.
Just make sure that the penis is attached to an at least eighteen year old dirt bag, otherwise you'd be trafficking yourself in child pornography.
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Constantly having to document that something happened means you're in a pretty hostile situation Now I know how Linus Torvaldis feels, being the Jedi Master of the kernel.
But his solution was: "ftp is my backup!" So guys can scramble all they want and cream themselves getting that snapshot. And Linus, verbal as he is, didn't waste his time backtracking what he said. All he really meant was,This is about you, not me isn't it?
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What might be interesting would be a signing/timestamping app that has a portion sitting on the SIM card. This way, when a screenshot is taken, it is cryptographically signed, with the private key residing in a tamper resistant area, with no way to forge when the screenshot was signed.
As for unsend functionality, it is part of Exchange as well, but if one reads mail fairly quickly (or has a mail filter to move mail) the unsend attempt will be not successful, and tends to let the receiver know the sender wa
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Skype has had it for ages. (Score:2, Informative)
Move along, nothing to see here.
Forced my hand (Score:1)
You cannot run the app without entering in a mobile number. They don't need my mobile number, they want it. Ditched messenger.
idiotic. (Score:2)
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How will it stop the reciever taking screen grabs? OR save it using other methods?
Or more importantly, how will it stop customers from leaving?
if messaging eclipses email (Score:2)
uhoh.wav, the year 2000 called, they want their ICQ back.
Once sent you can't unsend it on the Internet. As soon as a client refuses to implement the feature, or worse, implements a feature that highlights, tracks and uploads these, you're done for. Look at Exchange un-sending in e-mail.