Un-send messages

How to ‘un-send’ messages

 

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s text message snafu has caused quite a stir, but is there anything he could have done to avoid it (other than not sending a nasty text message in the first instance)?

You’ve probably heard about Peter Dutton’s big mistake of accidentally sending a message (in which he referred to journalist Samantha Maiden as a “mad f***ing witch”) directly to Ms Maiden herself. 

Commentators from all sides have been raging, laughing, shocked and more. Ms Maiden has since updated her Twitter biography to read “Totally mad witch” and has accepted Mr Dutton’s apology.

Sure, Peter Dutton could have avoided all of this by not sending the disrespectful message in the first place, but whether it was full of insults or not, I’m sure we’ve all wished we could un-send a message at one point in our lives. It turns out that there are a few services that allow you to un-send a message, if you act quickly.

Gmail
If you have a Gmail account, you can head to ‘Settings’ and then under the ‘General’ tab you will find an option to ‘Enable Undo Send’. This activates a 5, 10, 20 or 30 second period between when you hit send and when your email is actually sent, allowing you to frantically let expletives fly as you make a mad dash for the un-send button within the small window of time you have to un-send the message.

Facebook
While direct messages cannot be deleted, posts on someone Facebook profile can. Just click the little arrow at the top right of the post and click ‘Delete’. People may still see the post before it’s deleted, but unless they’ve taken a screenshot, it’ll be gone for good.

SMS messages on Android, iPhone and iPad
Apple devices unfortunately don’t have any way to un-send messages at this time. Android devices on the other hand allow you to change the app that manages your SMS messaging. So if you want, you can change from the default messenger to an app which allows you to ‘un-send’ messages if you act fast. Popular apps which allow this include Chomp SMS andOn Second Thought (SMS).