AutoHotkey Community

[Yana]

Ok! I know that this isn’t directly related to AHK but was wondering if I could turn to the folks here on this forum for advice.

I would like to send a few photos to a few friends just for them to briefly see them and express their opinion on some clothing designs that I have done but ideally I would not want them to have these permanently in their possession. The one thing I felt was that if I were to E/Mail it to them they would have it permanently in their Inbox so figured that I would either send it across via Yahoo Messenger or Skype so it goes directly to their HDD.

Having done this -

My question - Is there any way that a photo can be made to self-destruct / self-delete after a specified period. Like if I were to send it today, it should automatically get deleted after say two days or after the two days have passed, the next time that the photo is accessed.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated - Please

[Carcophan]

Alt+PrintScreen. You can delete anything and everything you want. but if I printscreen your image, and save it seperatly, then its moot.

That said, a simpler solution is to host your own website with the images or flickr or photobucket or any other similar thing, and just have them up when you want and remove them when you dont. That way, they can visit the site/page, and only see the images while you have them hoseted/visible.

Either way, if I want to copy and save your image seperatly, there is probably very little you can do to stop it. And a self-destructing 'image/file' is far more complicated and less fool-proof than the other options IMHO.

[Yana]

Hey! Thank you for the prompt reply.

I know that a simple Printscreen command can makes things quite moot but this self-delete thought was obviously without the knowledge of the friend to whom I would be sending the images.

As I had envisaged it – it would be – I send them the images, let them have a look at them and innocuously two days later the image self-deletes. I obviously would give them no inkling that the image is capable of self-deleting itself so that they would not be prompted / tempted to make copies.

Just a thought, whether this would be possible???

[Carcophan]

With just an image itself, then no. You would need some way ot telling the image to delete, and a bmp/jpg/ect cannot do this obviously.

Can it be done.... yes. You would probably need an EXE though, assuming that they do not have AHK on there pc's.

You may be able to include the images packed into the EXE... when they open the EXE to view the images, the timer starts.... finds the image that was saved to the HDD (as long as it hasn't been renamed or copied) . But again it isn't full proof.

It is nice to assume the person you are sending pics too wouldn't be aware of this kind of stuff. But then again, you are already worried about them keeping your I.P. to begin with. If I was expecting a picture of a new sun dress... and got an /exe file without an explination, my radar would go off... but theres may not.

[kiwijunglist]

host on a webpage, disable right click button using javascript so they can't copy/save as the image. they can still ctrl+printscreen to capture the image if they really want it.

[Guest]

Hey!
I'd use web+flash(rather than javascript)+password access. I'd set up a simple flash gallery that displays external images, and use htaccess or a simple login system for controlling access to the gallery, and htaccess to restrict direct access to the images on the web server by anyone other than the gallery script.
You could use watermarks on the images and/or convert them into smaller resolution and worse quality if you're worried about people copying them with print screen.
Hope this helps.