This week I found out that several people I trusted infringed my privacy in email communication with them by forwarding my private messages addressed to them to a third party without my prior concent in order to complain against me. Of course, I'm to blame for having sent these messages to them, which they found bothering (this has nothing to do with sexual harassment, of course). But my worst mistake is the very fact that I trusted them. I'm not sure if forwarding someone else's message to a third party is legal or not in Israel, but it's not morally acceptable to me whatever the reason is.
I really hope I won't have to remain in touch with these people in the future, but if I should have to email them at all, I would do so by the so-called self-deleting (or self-destructing) email, which I happened to find while looking for a way to combat email privacy infringement. I'll also use it for other occasions in which my email privacy may be violated.
I've found several free services that offer such email. The one that has impressed me most is Pluto, which was launched by two Harvard Law School students. The only problem is that because of a high demand for the service, there is a very long waiting list. When I applied for this service yesterday, I found nearly 6,000 people waiting in front of me. I happened to email this service to clarify about one technical issue, then one of the founders, David Gobaud, also sent me an invitation to start using the service by skipping this long waiting list. He was kind enough to allow me to share this invitation with other people. It can be used 500 times. Since I've used it twice for two of my email addresses, there still remain 498 places. If you also care about your email privacy and/or have encountered its infringement by people you trusted, I highly recommend you this free service and take advantage of the above invitation. You don't have to change your email address in order to use this service. It's meant to work on many platforms. Unfortunately, however, I've been struggling with its configuration, in vain, but you may have a better luck. If you do, please let me know so that I may be figure out what I did wrong.
In the meanwhile, I've found a much easier free web service called Fade.li, which I also highly recommend, if you don't have to use RTL script. This service displays RTL script "backward", so for Hebrew, for example, it's not usable at all. If you know a better service, please share your information with me.
Email is a two-edged sword - it's a very fast and convenient means of communication, but on the other hand, almost everything you write to others is stored forever without being deleted. You have to think twice before you send an email message to someone by regular email. Those you trust right now can become your worst enemies by violating your email privacy. But let's outsmart them!