[Am-info] Deleted E-mail Can Still Reside on Hard Drive

[Eric M. Hopper]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 04:05:37PM -0500, Fred A. Miller wrote:
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> Deleted E-mail Can Still Reside on Hard Drive
> 
> Though Enron-related e-mails were deleted, pieces and entire copies
> of the messages can probably be found on the hard drives, according
> to a computer forensics expert.
> 
> http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO67583,00.html
> 
> Now, the question I have is, is this true for all Linux mailers?

	Yes, it, in general, is true.

	Almost all filesystems implement erasure by simply forgetting
where something is rather than actually overwriting the information.
Even if the information is overwritten, it usually has to be overwritten
several times with different data or there are still traces left on the
HD.

	The only real solution to this problem is both a secure
filesystem that does overwrite delete information several times, and
using routine encryption for your email, making it much more difficult
to pick out of random noise.

Have fun (if at all possible),
-- 
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."  --- Thomas Jefferson
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."  -- Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.org  http://www.omnifarious.org/~hopper) --