It may sound Harry Potterish but allowing people to send notes which self destruct is actually a service provided by Privnote.

This seems to be how it works: you write a note and then post it. The note gets stored somewhere — the site doesn’t say where — and you’re given a link where you (or someone you give / mail the link to) can read it. The link works just once after which the note is destroyed. Privnote says the service provides ‘a little extra privacy at zero cost’.

The company also says in a disclaimer which shows up when you click on a link they send you that they ‘store the notes encrypted in a way that only the sender and receiver know how to decrypt’. This means, they say, that they cannot read the notes sent through Privnote. And, obviously, the company does not shoulder ‘any responsibility for the views and opinions expressed in the note’.

However, as Brian Beckham points out, the site does not specify exactly what happens to the data sent through its system. He asks some pretty important questions:

Privacy Policies are unusual in themselves. They’re common but that’s not the same as being ‘usual’. They are among the few instances where companies and others take it upon themselves to restrict their own freedom by saying that they will use the information they receive only in certain specified ways. The promises contained in Privacy Policies are binding on those who make them, and liability can be incurred if they are broken.

Nonetheless, as Brian says, one would assume that a company which provides a service which is all about privacy would have a clearly defined privacy policy. Privnote, however, doesn’t seem to have one though.

Perhaps the service is best suited to the needs of teenagers who’d like to spice things up a bit by sending each other supposedly private notes. Somehow, one can’t help but think that it isn’t a very bright idea to send confidential professional information across without actually knowing what’s happening to it.