OT: Email recall - What was the point?

[Robert Brockway]

On Tue, 25 May 2010, ted leslie wrote:

> i would love that option of undo in gmail, as sometimes some key slip i 
> make sends the email before i am finished, but i looked for the setting 
> you mentioned, and can't find it. ???

If I'm writing an email and accidental sending is simply not acceptable 
(eg a really serious email that I'm taking a long time to write) then I 
don't address it until I'm done.  I'll leave To: and CC: unset.  If I 
managed to fumble finger and try to send it, it won't go anywhere.

As to recall of emails itself, I can see the attraction but it is worth 
noting that there is no way to guarantee that the MTA has actually 
removed the email rather than just telling you that it has.  It could 
leave it in the inbox or it could remove it from the inbox and archive a 
copy for the sysadmin.   This need not be malicious - it is easy to have 
an MTA like Postfix keep a copy of all email that passes through.  The 
recall function would need to know about every copy and be able to remove 
it.

Cheers,

Rob

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