Judge Orders Deleted Emails Turned Over

Anonymous Coward writes "In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a subpoena sent to Google orders the turnover of the complete contents of a Gmail account, including deleted e-mail messages. The Judge has granted the subpoena and orders that all e-mail messages, including deleted messages, be divulged. Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages 'may remain in our offline backup systems' in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. So much for the Delete Forever button."

Comments

Private Mail Server

[mcrbids]

This is why I have almost always had my OWN PRIVATE MAIL SERVER, used by myself, friends, and family.

Perhaps it's overkill for the average Joe, but as a technology provider anyway, keeping my own server is economical, and provides me strong assurances of privacy.

I've NEVER trusted Gmail, Hotmail, or any other hosted application. I've never trusted those 3rd party "webmail gateways" that let you use your email address via a website.

It's not paranoia, it's just understanding that anybody who's not really on your side just might actually be out to get you!

I was never able to get my gmail account to work

[spidergoat2]

I don't think I'll bother now......

Why save deleted message?

[Gwarsbane]

I'm glad I don't use that service for anything important. After all when a message is deleted it should be gone. Not saved on some other server so that it can be used against me for some reason years down the road. I can't even really see saving it for a temp amount of time after its been deleted because there is no "undelete" feature (why should there be) and I'm sure if you contacted google and asked them to undelete a message you just deleted by mistake they would just laugh at you. If you delete something it should be gone, period.

Re:This is Why...

[eno2001]

Oh wait, you have backups? Did your e-mails you deleted off your home system magically get deleted off of them, too?

I have backups. But the distinct difference between me and GMail is that *I* decide if the government gets my mail. They better have a search warrant (assuming they haven't totally taken away every right we have) when they come asking for my server. If they don't. I've got time to destroy the drives. Currently my backups only hold deleted mail for 24 hours. Since 'rsync' is my backup utility it deletes files from the backup disk that are deleted on the master disk. I'm not paranoid about the government taking an interest in me at all. I think the Bush administration is a bunch of fascisistic knob jockeys, but the day they're interested in me is the day EVERYONE better worry. And finally, it's NOT tremendously harder to run your own mail server compared to using e-mail hosted by anyone else. I've been bitten multiple times in the past by others hosting my e-mail. I've been hosting my own since 2000 and haven't lost ANY mail. Running a mail server is no harder than running a web server. (Which I also do)