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Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

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Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#51

Post by falsestprophet »

dang wrote: post #35
falsestprophet wrote: post #22

It's really touching that you trust your wife to be smart enough to not use the mail server you run for adultery.

We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines. Normally I would let you know that personal attacks are not allowed on HN, that this is a bannable offense, and ask you not to do it again. But in your case we already did that. Edit: I reversed this because I'm not sure I interpreted the comment correctly. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12153922 and marked it off-topic.

This wasn't a personal attack and I don't follow how how it could be interpreted is a personal attack. It didn't in any suggest jacquesm's wife was engaged in adultery. It was a statement that jacquesm comment to codemogul was irrelevant.

The conversation unfolded as follows:

codemogul: "I caught my x-wife in an affair as she was using this same method the communicate with her lover."

jacquesm: "Funny, I've run the mail server of our family for quite a while and it would never enter my head to read someone else's email."

Here codemogul uncovered adultery by reading his x-wife's email hosted on a third-party server. Jacquesm then states that he runs a server for his family and would never consider reading their email on his server.

I commented "It's really touching that you trust your wife to be smart enough to not use the mail server you run for adultery." which is an observation that jacquesm response to codemogul was irrelevant because he could only uncover adultery like codemogul if his wife was not smart enough to use a service hosted by her husband.

That the fact jacquesm had access to the server made it unlikely that if there were to be untrustworthy activity (and I did not suggest there was) that it would take place on the server.

I don't think jacquesm would interpret that as a personal attack. It would be interesting to ask him.

"Normally I would let you know that personal attacks are not allowed on HN, that this is a bannable offense, and ask you not to do it again. But in your case we already did that."

This is not a personal attack. That also was not a personal attack. Neither were mean or mean-spirited.

attack: "to criticize or oppose fiercely and publicly"

personal: "of or concerning one's private life, relationships, and emotions rather than matters connected with one's public or professional career."

No one was criticized or opposed personally in either case.

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#52

Post by colejohnson66 »

beachstartup wrote: post #17
codemogul wrote: post #8

Relevant and coincidental personal anecdote: 10 years ago I caught my x-wife in an affair as she was using this same method the communicate with her lover. Her choice of email address for the shared account raised alarms on my firewall, so it was a simple matter to track to her machine. While she had gone to the similar trouble to delete all records on Yahoo (coincidentally), she had been browsing with IE which, due…

i'm curious... what was her reaction when you recovered the data?

Divorce?

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#53

Post by colejohnson66 »

falcolas wrote: post #2

I'm curious if there will be blowback on Internet email companies if it turns out the emails were not deleted, just archived away from user's access.

Doubt it. Remember the NSA "scandal" that lasted a few months before people went back to not caring? Remember Kony 2012? North Korea's human rights violations? You'll never fix the problems in America until you fix the horrifically apathetic attitude of Americans.

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#54

Post by gcr »

blfr wrote: post #43
jacquesm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be strange to you but running a mailserver was pretty normal back in the day and even now I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, I see a lot wrong in having just a few email service providers that get to dictate terms. There is arguably something wrong with how hard it is to properly set up and secure a mail server, but the concept of running your own mailserver is no different than running your own HTTP(S) ser…

It is somewhat different because you need to convince other mail servers to cooperate with yours whereas the HTTPS server works directly with clients (browsers) and may function completely independently.

I run my own mail server. It's simple enough to set up SPF in your DNS records to avoid landing in Gmail's spam, at least. Not sure about other providers. I send so little mail that I'm basically background noise.

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#55

Post by [deleted] »

dpark wrote: post #50
codemogul wrote: post #8

Relevant and coincidental personal anecdote: 10 years ago I caught my x-wife in an affair as she was using this same method the communicate with her lover. Her choice of email address for the shared account raised alarms on my firewall, so it was a simple matter to track to her machine. While she had gone to the similar trouble to delete all records on Yahoo (coincidentally), she had been browsing with IE which, due…

I have trouble understanding why people go through such lengths to maintain a hidden affair. If you've decided to have a long-term relationship with the new person, why not just file for divorce instead of going through ridiculous lengths to hide your new relationship? It seems like a lot of trouble, plus it makes it very clear that you're a terrible person when it's discovered. Please forgive my nosy question, but w…

[deleted]

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#56

Post by DanBC »

dpark wrote: post #50
codemogul wrote: post #8

Relevant and coincidental personal anecdote: 10 years ago I caught my x-wife in an affair as she was using this same method the communicate with her lover. Her choice of email address for the shared account raised alarms on my firewall, so it was a simple matter to track to her machine. While she had gone to the similar trouble to delete all records on Yahoo (coincidentally), she had been browsing with IE which, due…

I have trouble understanding why people go through such lengths to maintain a hidden affair. If you've decided to have a long-term relationship with the new person, why not just file for divorce instead of going through ridiculous lengths to hide your new relationship? It seems like a lot of trouble, plus it makes it very clear that you're a terrible person when it's discovered. Please forgive my nosy question, but w…

Affairs aren't about leaving your current partner and starting with someone new. The point of many affairs is the keeping it hidden stuff which adds to the excitement.

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#57

Post by danieltillett »

dpark wrote: post #50
codemogul wrote: post #8

Relevant and coincidental personal anecdote: 10 years ago I caught my x-wife in an affair as she was using this same method the communicate with her lover. Her choice of email address for the shared account raised alarms on my firewall, so it was a simple matter to track to her machine. While she had gone to the similar trouble to delete all records on Yahoo (coincidentally), she had been browsing with IE which, due…

I have trouble understanding why people go through such lengths to maintain a hidden affair. If you've decided to have a long-term relationship with the new person, why not just file for divorce instead of going through ridiculous lengths to hide your new relationship? It seems like a lot of trouble, plus it makes it very clear that you're a terrible person when it's discovered. Please forgive my nosy question, but w…

Some people like to have their cake and eat it.

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#58

Post by ben_jones »

x0x0 wrote: post #44
Oletros wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the explanation. Can the members of the marriage(spouses?) change that? Here in Spain some autonomous communities (like the states in USA) have community property as default and some others have asset separation as default but when one gets married can decided which one to use

You can get a prenuptial agreement (prenup), but which laws you are allowed to override varies by state, duration of the marriage, the whims of the divorce court, and how diligent you are about keeping assets separate during the marriage. You're probably better off spending your energy on avoiding marrying the wrong person...

In summary you can get a prenup, but it may not matter at all depending on jurisdiction and a variety of circumstances.

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#59

Post by scoot »

IgorPartola wrote: post #39

Aren't backups basically a guarantee that you can never ever delete anything from anyone's server? Even if you hit delete on an email/post/photo/etc. if they made a backup before then, your data will now forever live on in some vault or maybe just Amazon Glacier. I can't imagine that Yahoo would go and retroactively remove your email from their backup tapes/optical discs/offline hard drives/clay tablets that they use…

The nearest thing to a "standard" for retention of operational backups is 30-60 days. For organisations retaining backups as part of some ill-conceived archive, 7 years is typical; for organisations retaining backups under legal hold, or whose backup process is out of control, indefinite retention is not unheard of.

So while it's possible that backups mean you can never be entirely certain your deleted data will stay deleted, it's most certainly not guaranteed.

In Europe, the recently enacted General Data Protection Regulations "GDPR" which will come into force in 2018 will in theory require organisations to ensure that personal information is removed in an appropriate timeframe - this would include disposing of backups, or where data is comingled, ensuring at a granular level that data is blacklisted for restore.

It remains to be seen how practical that will be, so moving to retentions appropriate for operational restore may be the more sensible solution.

Re: Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

#60

Post by sah2ed »

x0x0 wrote: post #44
Oletros wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the explanation. Can the members of the marriage(spouses?) change that? Here in Spain some autonomous communities (like the states in USA) have community property as default and some others have asset separation as default but when one gets married can decided which one to use

You can get a prenuptial agreement (prenup), but which laws you are allowed to override varies by state, duration of the marriage, the whims of the divorce court, and how diligent you are about keeping assets separate during the marriage. You're probably better off spending your energy on avoiding marrying the wrong person...

> You're probably better off spending your energy on avoiding marrying the wrong person...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-wil...

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