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Researchers have found a way to produce self-destructing computer documents and data, giving people more control over personal data stored on the web.

The researchers from the University of Washington have designed a prototype system, Vanish, that will let users create documents, emails and even blog posts that have a limited lifespan. After the specified time limit, the data will be encrypted, making them permanently unreadable to anyone, including the original author of the message.

"Using the Vanish Firefox plug-in, a user can create an email, a Google Docs document, a Facebook message, or a blog comment-specifying that the document of message should vanish in eight hours," says Roxana Geambasu, a PhD student and lead investigator on the Vanish project. Anyone wanting to see the document would also need to download the Vanish software.

"Before the eight-hour time-out expires, anyone who has access to the data can read it. However, after that time expires, nobody can read that web content-not the user, not Google, not Facebook, not a hacker who breaks into the cloud service, and not even someone who obtains a warrant for that data."

The web has made it nearly impossible to erase users' past. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, it's easy to imagine unwanted Facebook pictures resurfacing just in time for a job interview. More seriously, Twitter recently suffered a series of leaks after hackers accessed documents stored on the web.

Despite the potential of the technology, there are still issues that the inventors of Vanish may still have to overcome, experts said. "This type of research still faces many of the same challenges that the industry has been trying to solve with digital rights management before it can have widespread practical application," a spokesman from the Cloud Security Alliance said.

Vanish is available to download and install, but the researchers emphasise that there may still be bugs that need to be resolved. They are ask users to "treat it with a sceptical eye, and report bugs and vulnerabilities."

研究人员发现一种方法能制造出可进行自毁的电脑文件和数据，这赋予人们更大的控制权来处理储存于网页上的个人数据。

来自华盛顿大学的研究人员设计了一个原型系统名为Vanish，该系统可让用户创建文件、电子邮件、甚至保存期很短的博客文章。在设定时间到期之后，数据会被加密并任何人永久不得阅读，甚至于消息创建者本人。

Vanish项目的博士生兼首席调查员吉姆巴索说道："用户可以使用Vanish Firefox插件创建电子邮件、Google Docs文件、Facebook消息或博客评论。在经过指定后，包含信息的文件会在8小时后消失。"并且任何想浏览该文件的人也需要下载Vanish软件。"在8小时期满之前，任何有权限的人都可以阅读该数据。然而，期满之后，就没人再可以浏览到网页内容，用户不行，Google不行，Facebook不行，侵入云服务的黑客不行，并且甚至于拥有该数据通行证的人也不行。"

各类网页的运作使得清除用户过往信息变得不可能。在Facebook和Twitter时代，当你那些不想要了的Facebook照片再次出现在一次工作面试中时，你绝不会感觉到意外。更加严重的是，Twitter在被黑客攻击窃取走部分网页上的文件后，最近正遭受一系列信息泄漏事件。

专家称，尽管该软件具有技术潜力，Vanish发明人仍有许多问题尚待解决。云安全联盟发言人称："在该类型研究广泛推向实际应用之前，它仍然面临着与行业内一直试图解决的数位权限管理相同的挑战。"

尽管Vanish现已提供下载和安装，研究者强调软件中仍有需要解决的故障。他们要求用户要带着怀疑的眼光来使用，并随时报告使用中的故障和弱点。
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