You are not going to be able to realize your quest.
First, don't turn off the dumpster, it saves butts many more times than it burns them. A) As our folks at Enron have found out, deleting a message is a long way from destroying it. Once a message has been created, just assume that it's there forever, somehow, someway. B) Even if you delete the message, the sender probably still has a copy of it. Matter of fact, that's how Single Instance Store works in Exchange. And that's what catches a lot of people when the run mailbox cleanup agents, The clean out all folders except for the sent items. As long as there is a copy there, Exchange storage stays the same. C) Messages are often printed out, that creates the paper trail D) Messages are often synchronized with other devices, Palms, Ces, BlackBerrys are examples. E) If you use OWA to read messages, they often end up in local cache or even network cache F) Even when you delete the physical message they aren't overwritten in the Exchange Store ( I believe that there is an option/version that can attempt it) G) And when the are deleted, electrical signatures often exist on the disk platter H) 10 servers means that you can have a copy on each server I) And there's copies on backup tapes J) And there's electrical residues after backup tapes have been written (ask Nixon about this one!) In short, tell the lawyers it can't be done. There is NO WAY that you can or should guarantee that a message has been deleted. Emphasize that if you don't want traces of a message to exist, don't create the message. And more importantly, if you are expecting to do something of questionable legality, just don't do it! Make sure that your organization has a document retention policy. Email and all electronic objects should have the same rules as any paper rules. Make sure that backups follow the rules and don't keep things around longer than the retention period. Take one day a month for the entire company to clean things out. Once it hits a computer, assume that you can't delete it! Ed Woodrick -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Posted At: Friday, March 15, 2002 3:57 PM Posted To: Microsoft Exchange Conversation: If I delete an email is it really gone? Subject: If I delete an email is it really gone? Exchange 5.5 SP4, 10 Exchange servers, 1 site Outlook 2000 clients I was tasked with the following and need some help finding the answers. I need to be assured that when an item is deleted from a mailbox, it is really gone. We currently have the dumpster feature enabled which I plan to disable. My question is, if a mail item is deleted and the dumpster is turned off, is the item really unrecoverable? If it is recoverable, how can I change our configuration so that it is unrecoverable? Is that even possible? Could someone reconstruct that data in any way even though it has been deleted? On a side note, I know that backups play into this and that will be addressed later. Thanks everyone.... Jeff _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
