if i erase my emails, can they still be traced?

Question

my friend had an "on-line affair" and now her husband is saying that he can get all her correspondences off Yahoo's server. can he really?

Answer 1

No he cannot, I don't care what kind of geek you are but no company has enough storage space to keep old emails from every person!! That would just require such massive amounts of space!!!! Also, email servers don't care about your emails, once you delete them, their gone. They do keep logs that you got a email at such a time, and it was sent from such a person, but that's strictly for security reasons, and he would only have access to them if he had a warrant which is not possible to get to see if your having an affair. Tell your friend that she needs to tell her husband to shut up and stop lying and using scare tactics against her!!!!

Also if she is using outlook, it is very hard to retrieve emails that have been deleted from the trash can. Outlook uses a single file to store every email in a folder. Once the email is gone the data is removed from the file. Their is no undeleting of files to restore deleted information. Some people watch too much T.V. The only true viable option is checking for a backed up file from system restore on xp, or she had not deleted them from the sent mail folder and he found them.

Answer 2

I work in a company that does computer forensics for litigation purposes. YES, any and all email (deleted or not) can be retraced through the harddrive. Whether or not Yahoo can do it is another story. I am not familiar with the infrastructure of Yahoo's online repository so I do not know if they can retrieve that info through the server.

But it is possible if you have the correct equipment, the person's hard drive and know what you are doing.

Answer 3

well let me say this. Your ISP and also your emails always have a trace. even if you delete something it is never gone. There is always a back-up copy on there server. The computer age is having big brother looking down over your shoulder. If you are doing something wrong online them face the facts. The internet is never a safe place. Sorry to say.

Answer 4

If the mails are stored on local PC (download via POP3) they can be recovered. Software tools are available (free ware) and they work as long as the original files haven't been overwritten.
If the mails have been only on a web-based account it's for private persons (non governmental) likely impossible to retrieve the data.
Don't worry.

Answer 5

Is this "a friend"? In your question you write "my e-mails".

He can't get them, not unless he has a court order. He might be able to retrieve some files off her computer even if she has deleted them if she used a program like outlook.

If she has admitted to the affair, then what good will it do for him to see the e-mails anyway?

Answer 6

if the emails are deleted from the inbox and the trash folder, they might remain on the yahoo servers for a very short time, but would require goverment access to view them like police.fbi etc..

Answer 7

I dont know about off of the Yahoo server, but if her husband is really computer savy. You can fiqure out anything, everything you do online is in the computer's hard drive, and that can be checked and investigated. Good luck!

Answer 8

He's probably bluffing, but what does it matter? You're, I mean she's busted because he already knows.

When I worked in an ofice, I used to delete my old emails on a regular basis and I was told not to do that because when I deleted them they were really gone.

Answer 9

Definitely possible. Beware! Hopefully she didn't download any porn or upload any nude pics of herself, because those too are stored in the hard drive.

Answer 10

i think so. when you delete something from the computer it really stays on there until it is covered up by something else. or so i've been told.