Crypto relevance: None. Privacy relevance: High.
Often files retrieved include e-mail thought to have been erased long ago. It survives because the diligent computer system manager makes backup tapes of everything on the system every night, then stores those tapes for years.
Uh... they back up their *mail* spools? Yeah, right.
machine:/home/mark/.elm mark> grep mbox elmrc receivedmail = /home/mark/mail/mbox sentmail = /home/mark/mail/mbox.out People do record their incoming and outgoing email. Smart ones will store it offsite (auto farward to their home machine). Others will pgp them online. Mostly though the cleartext email files will be happily archived away each night to the nice friendly DAT tape down the corridor in the machine room. This is also a situation on PC and Mac POP clients. They can be configured to record your email as it goes in and out. Here we also backup the PC's each night to a DAT. Thats why it's important to self sanitize your files. Me, I just nuke any sensitive information that may arrive in my work mbox, or save/forward it to a safer place. I discourage people from using my work address as a regular personal contact point. Also ensure your admins aren't the nosy types. I started work at one place and noticed in the /.sh_history file that the previous admin was regularly grepping peoples mail spools for his name. This caused some concern to the management when they were informed. Obviously these forays were not part of his everyday job and were a personal endeavour. Cheers, Mark mark@lochard.com.au