The title says it all. This is one of my assignments and I need some help in getting started. The basic idea behind the assignment is that I have to design a self destructible email program that is capable of destructing the message after (n) time duration.
Speaking about self destructible emails, there are quite a few ones on the internet offering the same service. But what they do is, they just convert the email message into an image and store them on their servers. Now, they send the message attaching the image inline with it. After they receive a hit on that image (which means that the message was being opened), they simply delete the image and the inline image link breaks! BOOM!
IMO, that's not what a self destructing email should be like. Nevertheless, in my case, I have to take care of following points:
- I have to do it for TEXT. No image, nothing else.
- I have to assume that the systems used throughout the process will be UNIX based (I don't know how that is going to make a difference).
- There are also some hints regarding the usage of various network layers in solving the problem.
----------------EIDT-------------------------- Okay, I went to the professor today and got a clear explanation of what all needs to be done in this assignment. First of all, I was assuming it wrong. This isn't supposed to be done "in general". What I mean by that is, I have to do that ONLY for one/two UNIX systems. Let me put it this way, all I have is two UNIX systems and nothing else. Now I want to create a program (in UNIX itself) that would do that self-destructing thing. I have total control of protocols and the network layers and I have to code anything and everything required at any level. Hope that clears the doubt.