Slightly OT: Got a weird one regarding EMail logs and ISPs.

[Craig White]

On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 22:32 -0700, Jim March wrote:
> Not exactly Linux but then not exactly "not" either.
> 
> Got a friend who got involved in a business deal that went south, now
> he's suing.  The guy he's suing sounds like a real winner and is
> claiming there's a couple grand worth of expenses my friend never
> agreed to.  Except the guy we'll call "the bad guy" for now has what
> he claims is an EMail in which my friend authorized the expenses in
> question.
> 
> The bad guy has produced this EMail for a court.  It doesn't include
> header data - just the timestamp received at COX (late Jan. 2009),
> to/from info (allegedly from my friend's MSN.COM account to their
> COX.NET account), subject line and text.
> 
> He says the EMail in question is fake, he never sent it.
> 
> They could have easily faked it any number of ways, but the header
> data would of course be much harder to fake, and these guys ain't all
> that smart.  Right now he's telling the court it's a fake EMail (under
> oath on his part, sworn declaration) and he's doing a request for
> document production for the header data.
> 
> Now assuming he's telling me the truth and he never sent that, I would
> assume the other side will claim they purged their electronic copy so
> they have no header data, if they're at all smart.
> 
> Can he ask his paid ISP (msn bleah on a dial-up account paid to them
> gag) to show that they have no log for his outgoing mail of that
> subject line at that time, and that there would be one if the message
> is fake?  I would guess that as an MSN customer he doesn't need a
> court order to track data he allegedly sent?  OR if MSN doesn't keep
> such logs, is it possible COX does and he gets a court order for their
> logs, would COX keep that kind of thing?
> 
> Any other thoughts on cracking this?
> 
> I'm BCCing the friend...
----
I would tend to doubt that they would keep the logs longer than 90 days.

I would think that this would fall under hearsay rules and be largely
inadmissible. 

Even e-mail headers can be forged (and still entered into a mail
system).

Therefore, an e-mail does not represent a contractual document.

I also would think that given the relative ease with which one can forge
an e-mail, including sender, recipient and headers, that there is little
credibility to the document...regardless of any 'sworn declaration'

I mean, I have already won lotteries in Europe more than 500 times so
why do I still need income?

Seriously though, the real issue is the written contract/agreement that
they have between them.

Craig


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