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Yahoo Ordered to Show How It Recovered 'Deleted' Emails (pcmag.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Magazine: Just what kind of email retentions powers does Yahoo have? According to a policy guide from the company, Yahoo cannot recover emails that have been deleted from a user's account -- simple as that. If the email is in a user's account, it's fair game, and Yahoo can even give law enforcement the IP address of whatever computer is being used to send said email.

Or, at least, that's what Yahoo has said. A magistrate judge from the Northern District of California has ordered Yahoo to produce documents, as well as a witness for deposition, related to the company's ability to recover seemingly deleted emails in a UK drug case... a UK defendant was convicted -- and is currently serving an extra 20-year prison sentence -- as part of a conspiracy to import drugs into the United Kingdom. He's currently appealing the conviction, in part because the means by which Yahoo recovered the emails in question allegedly violate British law.

The drug smugglers apparently communicated by creating a draft of an email, which was then available to others who logged into that same account.

3 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Same trick David Petraeus used by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
  2. Seen it a hundred times at least. by Narcocide · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some exec says they can't recover anything deleted from the servers until one of the sysadmins points out that the server backup archives don't process these deletion requests retroactively.

  3. Re:You've got to appreciate the irony... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    How about if the law they break is planting evidence?