TecH: IM and YOU: PRIVACY

With this new scandal by the House of Representatives, the question of the posterity of IM messages came up. In his blog entry, Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: Instant Messages: asks:

I have one question about the alleged 52 instant message exchanges that ABC News has in its hands:

1. Who saves and records IM exchanges for posterity?
   I mean: I know how emails are saved and forwarded; it happens automatically.
1. But I was unaware that IM interactions have some permanent record that can be retrieved after the fact. Is there such a possibility?

Yes Virginia (Or Andrew) EVERY single Instant Messenger program DEFAULTS to saving ALL of your conversations ON your Hard Disk.

You need to EXPLICITLY make sure that your conversations ARE NOT Logged.
AND you have to presume that the person on the OTHER side MAY be storing THEIR logs of YOUR conversation with them


Answer?: The internet is a BIG bad place, and you need to make sure you perform SAFE COMPUTING. SAFE COMPUTING, like SAFE SEX is up to YOU!

MarkB

"http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/6262145"