Create Self-Destructing Notes With Burn Note

When I think about self-destructing notes or messages, I tend to think of spy movies like James Bond or Impossible Mission, and not necessarily about something that average people like you and I come in contact with. They do have their purposes though, for instance to send a friend a password, a web link, or anything else that you may not want a record to exist of.

Burn Note offers to do that, sort of. You can start writing the note right away once you have opened the Burn Note homepage. Keep in mind that you can only add plain text to it, and no media or formatting. Once you have written the note you should check out the options before you click on the send button.

The options let you configure the time the note will remain visible on the screen, the type of the note, and assign a password to it for additional security. When it comes to type, you have the option to have it set to plain text, which allows copying, to short phrases which does not allow copying, or to spyglass mode which also does not allow the copying of the note. The difference between the two modes that do not allow copying is the following: short phrases divides the note into different parts that are shown individually on the screen, while spyglass hides all of the note except for a small area that is underneath the mouse cursor.

A click on send displays the unique message url on the screen. It is now necessary to copy it, and send it to the recipient. The recipient then needs to enter the password if set before the message is displayed on the screen for the selected time.

It should be obvious that this is not a high security method of exchanging information. The reasons for this are that it is still necessary to communicate with the message recipient, and that the recipient can still copy the message, for instance by taking screenshots of it. For personal use though, this can be an interesting option. Registered users get read confirmations, which appears to be the only difference to unregistered ones.

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