Viewing post #725130 by Horntoad

dave said:I remember those but in nearly every case they didn't work. Once the email is sent it is immediately delivered across the network, usually directly to the user's computer. It has always been impossible to legally reach into someone else's computers and delete content. Those programs "worked" by sending a followup email that, when received by the recipient's software, will trigger it to delete the original mail. But both users had to have compatible software and few email clients supported retraction.

I will admit that I am not particularly knowledgeable about programming, but in this case we are not talking about emails being sent to someones computer. I'm guessing that ATP is a closed system, so T-mails should be retrievable. Now that I think about it, I believe it was AOL that had the retrievable email, since it was also a web based system. If you sent an email to another AOL user, it could be retrieved before it was read. I have not had this problem an ATP myself but I can see where it would be useful.