Lessons learned on e-mail When it comes to messages, some traces can linger
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | October 7, 2009 The Boston Globe
Michael Kineavy, chief aide to Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, has learned the hard way that simply deleting e-mails does not make them go away. The city is potentially facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses to retrieve e-mail messages he deleted that have been subpoenaed by federal authorities and are the subject of a formal request from the Globe.
The lesson for Kineavy, who said yesterday he was taking an unpaid leave, is that it's very difficult to wipe out all traces of the e-mails we send. And it's not just e-mail. Millions of us post personal information on social networking sites like Facebook, display photographs at Flickr, or load videos on YouTube. And once that data has been published online, it's virtually impossible to erase it.
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