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

[Bob Elzer]

To show how email can be forged, you friend should create an email from the
bad guy, confessing to the forged email, and saying he's sorry.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Jim
March
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 10:33 PM
To: Tucson Free Unix Group; Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Slightly OT: Got a weird one regarding EMail logs and ISPs.

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...

Jim
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