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Comment by ashray | Hacker News Reader

The only use case I could think of was those ATM Pins that you receive which always say "destroy this letter after you memorize your pin". So you could email a pin/some sort of sensitive info and have some level of safety.

Obviously the person can choose to save the image but you could also not destroy your ATM Pin Letter and/or even photocopy it.

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When a landlord is doing a credit check, you can also send your SSN with some peace of mind.

Wouldn't that fall under the "seriously sensitive information" that is recommended not to be sent? From the FAQ:

"That being said, you should always be careful. We recommend you do not send any seriously sensitive information through Ghostmail and refrain from corresponding with people you do not trust."

That being said, congrats on building something. I still haven't gotten that far.

Agreed, I seriously wouldn't recommend sending that information online at all, but the unfortunate thing is that some people send it through email anyway. A more appropriate use case would be to send a secret that isn't damning, but that you'd just prefer wouldn't stick around in someone's inbox.

You should never send primary account numbers[0] over unencrypted protocol or to any system that will store it unencrypted.

While most email systems communicate over encrypted protocols, very few encrypt their data store.

For security's sake, please never send your SSN over email for any reason.

[0] Your SSN is your Primary Account Number for the United States.

Use https://onetimesecret.com/ instead.

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