I see it in movies all the time and I was wondering if they can seriously pull up every IM you have ever sent?

Question

I know it sounds like a retarted question but I get in arguments about it all the time, I dont think the computer could store all those but its something they uise in movies and on tv to catch the "Bad guy" all the time..So to settle the argument is this possible? Or just movie crap? I will pick a best answer not just let this thing sit I promise.

Answer 1

Yes. Many large companies who provide IM services keep all IM records for at least 90 days in a compressed form, some as long as three years on their servers. All these records can be obtained quite quickly by law enforcement officials if needed since it is usually stored by user account.

Some IMs actually do keep records on your computer temporarily as well. These records can be obtained with forensic programs unless your drive is properly scrubbed.

In 2003, Simson Garfinkel, CISSP and Abhi Shelat, a then grad student at MIT, did a test on 129 hard drives to see what information they could pull off of them. Only 12 were cleaned sufficiently to prevent them from gathering information. IMs were but a tiny fraction of the information gathered by their experiment.

In 2005, german encryption technology specialist Pointsec tested hard drives bought on eBay to see if they still carried data and discovered that seven out of every 10 devices it tested still bore readable and recoverable information.

Back to IMs. Some IM programs don't store individual IMs in a separate file per se. They keep all the information in a compact form in browser files and/or application files. These files become part of the program and are often only deleted when the entire application is removed. In some cases this won't delete the files either as they are kept in .dll files on your computer and can only be deleted manually. The information store from these IMs can be retrieved until deleted and the drive areas scrubbed.

Answer 2

First of all, your IM can save your conversations if you tell it to (most popular IMs do anyway) so that if someone hacks into your computer, they CAN look at your IMs if they think it's worth it.

If you're talking about people being able to read past IMs remotely or from a server, then that would (technically) be possible, but very improbable. Imagine how many million people are chatting in North America alone, every day, a server could easily process a few gigabytes of chat. If they tried to save every conversation onto the server, the cost of buying hard drives would be HUGE. And think of all the time it'll take to sort through the IM messages.

So therefore, unless you tell your computer to save it, there probably isn't anywhere else that will save your IMs. However, that doesn't mean that they can't be read by third parties. People, if they really wanted, could INTERCEPT your IM messages. This is sort of like how they bug your phones. The bug just copies the information and sends it to both the original, intended recipient and the third party as well. Of course, intercepting an IM is done with software , not hardware, like intercepting a phone, but it is still entirely possible.

In fact, the NSA (who has the time to monitor these things) are probably doing it right now, just like how they're monitoring all the cell-phone calls all over the world...

The probability that you'll say/write something that will make them suspect you, though is pretty slim.

Answer 3

Yes, well they aren't kept eternity but they are kept for quite some time on a server not your computer. Say you were using AIM they store every IM sent and received through their sever for quite some time, for security purposes of obvious reasons. As long as you aren't associating with Terrorists or anything you're fine. Hope this helps, Brodster

Answer 4

Depends on whether you have a proxy server through which you connect to the internet or who your ISP is and what records they collect. Financial institutions are now required to keep on file every instant message as well as e-mail, thanks to the lawsuits against investment firms whose misdeeds cost investors lots of money and then their subsequent dismissal of requests to submit to the courts "all communications" regarding their stock recommendations. Turns out they could only get to recent e-mails and no instant messages, so congress gave them some incentive to make sure they kept them for a while (i.e you get to stay out of jail if you do it right).

Answer 5

No, they can't do that. There are no logs stored by AIM for your IMs. although there are other things they can do, anything that has been deleted can be recovered (pretty easy) and even formatted drives are easily (i can do it) recoverable.

Answer 6

depends, but i think yes.

Why u been sending bad messeges or wat?