Posted by Ecrivaine32 5 years ago In:

communication, digital, hackers, e-mail, data, computers, networks, communications, technology, password, electronic, storage, servers, theft, hacking, personal, email, server, search, passwords, identity, tech, delete, disappear, savvy, deleted

Emails never truly disappear?

We were talking the other night in my college class about how emails never truly disappear. Once they are sent, and even if you delete them, they never truly can ever be wiped from existence and could be pulled up again by some savvy person. Is this true? If so, can you explain how this happens, and where exactly these emails go and how someone could search something such as an email sent from a password-protected account from 10 years past? Just curious.

This is a scary thought, when you think about how you might have, in the past, sent your SSN somewhere to someone for something work-related - yikes!

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2 Answers

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solace Answered:

Emails are a bunch of digital bits, transferred from your email application/editor to the recipient via mail servers around the world. This is, in some ways, similar to how snail mail works. You drop an envelope into a box where it's picked up, moved to a local office, from there to a regional office and then back down the chain to whomever you send that item.

In Email, all kinds of servers pass your item from one to the other until the recipient get your message.

Each of those servers keeps a local copy of your email (in most cases it's required by law). The length of time a copy is kept changes from each service provider to the next, but it's quite possible your email will be kept in backup storage for years.

If someone manages to get a court order, they can ask to retrieve a copy of your email, even if it was stored 10 years ago.

Btw, there are applications that encrypt your email. If you use one of those, the encrypted copy will be stored on the server and no one will be able to read it, even if they manage to get to the data somehow (excluding government aganecies that can break the encryption - but they can get any data they need anyhow).

Posted 5 years ago
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Kudos!

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kingo0o Answered:

nfo5o byemchi l7al ;)

Posted 5 years ago

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