Mumbai: Congratulations! Last night, after a binge with the boys, you actually mustered the nerve to shoot the boss that mail telling him what a so-and-so you really thought the fink was. Now that sobriety dawns, you spend the morning in nail-biting agony, dreading the pink slip. Or do you?

Bigstring, a new service started in January 2004, has been saving users from some tense and frustrating moments. Its users can sit back and relax. For, at the click of their mouse, this service, which relies on proprietary technology "permits email users to recall, modify, or set an expiration date for an e-mail already sent, even after the recipient has read it, "says Darin Myman, CEO of Recall Mail Corporation, Bigstring's parent company.

The idea for this face-saving technology was conceived almost a year back when Myman sent a client an email with a wrong attachment. He consulted David Daniels, co-founder and chief technical officer of Recall Mail Corporation, to find out if there was any way of retrieving the mail he had sent, and voila — a brilliant idea was born!

According to Myman, Bigstring e-mail accounts work with all the major email services like AOL, Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc and can be used by both businesses and consumers. The unique feature about this email is that senders have complete control over the sent email. They do not need the recipient's permission to recall the mail even if it has been opened. The body of the mail comes from Bigstring servers, thus leaving the message open to alteration by the sender. The product was launched after undergoing successful beta tests last December.

The Bigstring email looks like any other email coming to your inbox. If it is recalled or expires, it will show a blank body, and an attachment, if any, will only show a defunct link. If you delete the email, it is erased permanently from the system using a Cron programme that cleans the Bigstring hard drive every five minutes.

A mail sent to several people can be recalled or erased from selected recipients. But if you want it gone forever, just delete it from the sent folder, as well. This wondermail can be deleted or edited even if the recipient has forwarded it to others or moved it to a different folder.

Bigstring is "like having a string on your email that you can pull back," says Myman. The service costs $29.95 a year for consumers and $12.95 a month including up to five email accounts for businesses, and offers advanced spam and virus protection.

The product is claimed to be legal, but not everyone thinks it is acceptable. Anil Keswani, a web designer and entrepreneur based in India, thinks this technology could lead to unethical practices in business. For instance, a client could 'recall' an order after it has been executed and the only evidence of it would be a blank email (provided the subject has nothing conclusive).

Guess we'll just have wait and watch the direction in which the string is pulled.