Abstract: The invention provides tools and techniques for discouraging theft and facilitating recovery of lost devices by placing owner information in a non-volatile memory in the device. The owner information may be entered as an audio recording, as a sequence of typed characters, and in other ways. The owner information includes specific location data, such as the owner's telephone number, email address, and/or postal address. The owner information is easily displayed to the public on the device, without the need to use a specialized reader tool or the need to enter a password or other code to authorize the display. No separate database at a manufacturer or otherwise is needed to correlate the device with the owner's contact information. Instead, the device displays owner information in response to predetermined events, such as power-on, power-off, and/or pushing a “Who Owns Me?” button.

Abstract: Methods, articles, signals, and systems are provided for providing email message originators and distributors with default control over message removal at a message recipient's location, regardless of whether the message has been opened. For instance, a self-removing message is designated as such by the message's originator, and a self-removal enhancement is added to conventional message content before the message is transmitted over a computer network toward one or more recipients. At the recipient's location, the message is automatically deleted without additional effort by the recipient, before or after being displayed, according to the originator's instructions unless they are overridden by the recipient. ISPs and other message distributors may identify messages that should be self-removing, and make them self-removing if they are not.

Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for controlling the disclosure of sensitive information. Disclosure is controlled in the sense that (a) the information is not disclosed until predefined conditions are met, such as the passage of a certain time without an authorized update request for secrecy, (b) copies of the information are protected by encryption and by widespread, unpredictable storage, so that at least one copy will be available when disclosure is required, (c) the information is kept secret until disclosure is required, and (d) when disclosure is required, the information is sent to predefined destinations such as email addresses or posted to web sites, in a predefined format.