Old emails

[Alek]

I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or maybe 1986.

Is there an archive of emails?

Thanks.

[VanguardLH]

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or maybe 1986.
Is there an archive of emails?

You never mentioned which e-mail protocol is used to access your e-mail
account. If POP then e-mails are downloaded and stored locally. They
will remain until you deleted them (and even then may not physically
disappear from the e-mail client's database until your purge/compact the
database to physically remove the delete-flagged records). IMAP may
keep a local copy of an e-mail but the client remains in sync with the
server. If you delete an item in the client then it is deleted from the
IMAP server. If you delete an item using the webmail client to your
account then it gets deleted from any client connecting to that IMAP
server. If you delete an item in one e-mail client, it gets deleted
from the IMAP server, and then deleted from any other IMAP client
connecting to the same IMAP server for the same account. IMAP keeps
server and client(s) in sync.

Use the webmail client afforded by your e-mail client to see if the item
is still in the message store up on the server. Some folks configure
their e-mail clients to NOT delete items when retrieved via POP. The
default for POP is for the client to send a RETR[ieve] command followed
by DEL[ete] command. If the client is configured to "leave messages on
server" (for POP access) then the client omits the following DELete
command and the item remains on the server. Using a webmail client lets
you see what is on the server.

If using POP to access your e-mail account, you would find old copies of
the e-mail client's message store (its file) in your backups. You do
backups, right? If you don't do backups then you consider your data as
reproducible or trivial. Backups should be scheduled to run at periodic
intervals since those that depend on getting manually instigated by the
user are guaranteed to never get created (users are not reliable since,
as yet, they are not automatons). In your backups, you could walk back
through them to find older copies of the message store file for your
*unidentified* e-mail client. However, even if you do save backups at
periodic intervals, it is likely you don't have the space to store them
all the way back to 1986 or you have configured the backup program to
retain only so many backups that span back maybe only a month to a year.
That is, ancient backups likely get deleted or rolled out of the backup
store. Of course, if you still had that 1986-dated e-mail in your
*unidentified* e-mail client's message store until yesterday or a week
ago and your backups span back further than that then you would have a
backup copy of the message store file for your *unidentified* e-mail
client.

If you have been using IMAP and you don't see an item in your IMAP
client then it is also not up on the server. It's gone.

You never identified your e-mail client. Some have an archiving
function where old e-mails (or matching on some other criteria) get
moved into an archive file. This reduces the active message store's
size so the client remains responsive. The larger the message store
then the longer it takes for the client to show or manage it all. In a
client that supports archiving, you may have to configure it to show the
archive file. It is a separate message store so it won't affect the
primary one used to receive new e-mails; however, it is a message store
so it can get slow to view or manage when it gets huge. That is why
some users that configure to show the archive use auto-archiving on it
to move even older items into another archive, so they would end up with
a chain of archive, like one for 2015, another for 2014, and so on where
archiving was based on items that were over 1 year old, 2 years old, and
so on. They end up with yearly archives to ensure each doesn't get too
huge to slow responsiveness of the e-mail client and also reduce loss
should one of the archive files get corrupt or lost/deleted.

If you use POP and the e-mail is no longer in the message for your
*unidentified* e-mail client then it is likely you don't have that
e-mail anymore. If you do backups and the ancient e-mail wasn't deleted
until after however far back your backups span then you could retrieve
the file for the message store from your backup(s). If you use IMAP
which keeps server and client(s) in sync and you don't see it in your
IMAP e-mail client then it's gone unless the e-mail client kept offline
copies of IMAP e-mails in a local message store that was included in
your backups.

You would get a better and more focused response by asking in a
newsgroup whose community focuses on the same e-mail client (which you
should identify since obviously not all e-mail clients are the same).
Without the details, like the e-mail client and e-mail protocol, you'll
get vague responses for a vague question.

[Alek]

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or maybe 1986.
Is there an archive of emails?

Let me rephrase.

I'm looking ON THE INTERNET for the first email I ever wrote back in
87-88 or maybe 1986.

Is there an archive ON THE INTERNET of emails?

[David Ritz]

On Thursday, 07 July 2016 19:19 -0400,

Post by Alek

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or
maybe 1986. Is there an archive of emails?

Let me rephrase.
I'm looking ON THE INTERNET for the first email I ever wrote back in
87-88 or maybe 1986.

Unless you personally archived it, it's history.

Post by Alek
Is there an archive ON THE INTERNET of emails?

No.

- --
David Ritz <***@mindspring.com>
"The Internet is not for sissies." - Paul Vixie

[Alek]

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Hash: SHA1
On Thursday, 07 July 2016 19:19 -0400,

Post by Alek

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or
maybe 1986. Is there an archive of emails?

Let me rephrase.
I'm looking ON THE INTERNET for the first email I ever wrote back in
87-88 or maybe 1986.

Unless you personally archived it, it's history.

Post by Alek
Is there an archive ON THE INTERNET of emails?

No.

There are google groups that contain very old emails. The oldest one I
found that I had written was dated Feb 1988.

So there must be others. :-)

[Alek]

Post by Alek

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Hash: SHA1
On Thursday, 07 July 2016 19:19 -0400,

Post by Alek

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or
maybe 1986. Is there an archive of emails?

Let me rephrase.
I'm looking ON THE INTERNET for the first email I ever wrote back in
87-88 or maybe 1986.

Unless you personally archived it, it's history.

Post by Alek
Is there an archive ON THE INTERNET of emails?

No.

There are google groups that contain very old emails. The oldest one I
found that I had written was dated Feb 1988.
So there must be others. :-)

My mistake! What I found was not emails but rather USENET posts. Oldest
is December 9, 1987.

[Luuk]

Post by Alek

Post by Alek

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On Thursday, 07 July 2016 19:19 -0400,

Post by Alek

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or
maybe 1986. Is there an archive of emails?

Let me rephrase.
I'm looking ON THE INTERNET for the first email I ever wrote back in
87-88 or maybe 1986.

Unless you personally archived it, it's history.

Post by Alek
Is there an archive ON THE INTERNET of emails?

No.

There are google groups that contain very old emails. The oldest one I
found that I had written was dated Feb 1988.
So there must be others. :-)

My mistake! What I found was not emails but rather USENET posts. Oldest
is December 9, 1987.

if it's only limited to comp.mail.misc:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/alek.trishan$20comp.mail.misc

the answer would be: July 13, 2014

[VanguardLH]

Post by Alek

Hash: SHA1
On Thursday, 07 July 2016 19:19 -0400,

Post by Alek

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or
maybe 1986. Is there an archive of emails?

Let me rephrase.
I'm looking ON THE INTERNET for the first email I ever wrote back in
87-88 or maybe 1986.

Unless you personally archived it, it's history.

Post by Alek
Is there an archive ON THE INTERNET of emails?

No.

There are google groups that contain very old emails. The oldest one I
found that I had written was dated Feb 1988.
So there must be others. :-)

Those are NOT e-mails. E-mail and Usenet are NOT THE SAME method of
communication. You specifically asked about e-mails, not about articles
published to a mess network of NNTP servers. Stop confusing e-mail and
Usenet as both being e-mail. They use different protocols, they have
different retention policies, they have different private versus public
behaviors, and probably several other differing traits that I'm not
going to bother mentioning now. Saying e-mail and Usenet are the same
is like saying tires and laxatives are the same: both make you go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

So are you asking about e-mails or newsgroup posts?

[VanguardLH]

Post by Alek
Let me rephrase.
I'm looking ON THE INTERNET for the first email I ever wrote back in
87-88 or maybe 1986.

If it is not in your account (on the server), not in a message store in
your e-mail program, and not saved in a backup then those messages are
gone. They got deleted and no one has them. Not you, not "the
Internet", nowhere.

Post by Alek
Is there an archive ON THE INTERNET of emails?

If that were true then no one's e-mail would be private - and no one
would use e-mail to communicate to anyone else. For public
communication, like using a party line with telephones, you used chat
rooms, Usenet, bulletin boards, mailing lists, or forums. If you
published a message in a public communications venue then there is a
chance that it got archived somewhere; however, some public places have
limited visibility, like forum posts are often visible only by visiting
the forum.

[Hans-Georg Michna]

... IMAP ...

Did IMAP even exist in 1988? Did POP exist then?

Hans-Georg

[Bruce Esquibel]

Post by Hans-Georg Michna

... IMAP ...

Did IMAP even exist in 1988? Did POP exist then?

Ha, I think in 1988 you used something like:

cat /var/mail/username

and if you wanted to get fancy:

cat /var/mail/username | more

There was a program called 'mail' on most unix boxes but wasn't much better
than catting the mailbox.

I'm not sure when programs like elm and mutt came into fashion but those
only read directly from the mail spool.

-bruce
***@ripco.com

[David Ritz]

On Friday, 08 July 2016 12:34 -0000,

Post by Bruce Esquibel
There was a program called 'mail' on most unix boxes but wasn't much
better than catting the mailbox.

$ where mail
/usr/bin/mail

Post by Bruce Esquibel
I'm not sure when programs like elm and mutt came into fashion but
those only read directly from the mail spool.

Elm: 1986
Pine: 1992
Mutt: 1995
Alpine: 2007

$ where mutt
/usr/local/bin/mutt
/opt/local/bin/mutt

$ where alpine
/usr/local/bin/alpine
/opt/local/bin/alpine
/sw/bin/alpine

- --
David Ritz <***@mindspring.com>
Be kind to animals; kiss a shark.

[VanguardLH]

Post by Hans-Georg Michna

... IMAP ...

Did IMAP even exist in 1988? Did POP exist then?

Electronic "mail" existed back in the 60's and 70's. Back then, I was
working on IBM hosts (VSE, VM, AS400) and what they had were called
readerlists.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0822.txt (ratified August 13, 1982)
obsoleted
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0733.txt (ratified 21 November 1977)
which obsoleted
... and so on ...

Those describe the format of the messages, not how they got transported.
It was to help provide transports that would probably handle messages of
known format.

RFCs are established after de facto standards have already been
established. So e-mail (aka Internet messaging) existed before the RFC
suggested how it should be performed.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc918 (1984)
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1064 (1988)

Some RFCs are created to define what is. Some are created to define
what might be but look forward based on something that was. Electronic
mail is often credited to Ray Tomlinson, an ARPANET contractor, who
created it back in 1972 (44 years ago) but I'm pretty sure you can find
other electronic transports for messaging existed before that. E-mail =
Electronic Mail, and there have been many transports, technologies, and
history involved with E-mail.

The OP never mentioned what e-mail transport protocol he was using back
in 1986-1988. What transport was or is used for messaging is irrelevant
to storage of the messages. Your e-mail client has its own message
store and it doesn't matter if the message got to the client via POP,
IMAP, SMTP, WebDAV, DeltaSync, EAS, Exchange, or whatever. You don't
need to know if readerlists, VTAM, TCP, UDP, Ethernet, wire or fiber, or
wifi were involved to transfer a file to your computer if what you want
to know is where in the file system in your computer that a file
resides. He wanted to know *where* might be his old messages, not how
they got there.

You are very likely correct that Alek was using IMAP for his e-mail.
Don't know if he was using POP. Whatever transport protocol he used
back then doesn't affect his [re]sending those messages now with the
transport protocols now available, like sending them from one of his
accounts to another of his account and doing that today for messages
that are 30 years old.

After another reply from Alek, it appears it is not old e-mails that he
is looking for but old Usenet messages - an entirely different
communications venue that he confused as the same as e-mail. The
confusion is often caused by noobs who were bred on combination e-mail &
NNTP clients, like Outlook Express and Thunderbird. It's one client
supporting multiple protocols but the users sees just 1 client doing it
all. They start with e-mail, discover Usenet, and think Usenet is
e-mail.

[Gordon Levi]

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or maybe 1986.
Is there an archive of emails?

I hope not. Even if the CIA has one they won't show it to you. Only
you and the recipient(s) should have a copy and it is unlikely that
any of you can still access it.

[Fritz Wuehler]

Post by Alek
I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or maybe 1986.
Is there an archive of emails?

If you used Yahoo, there might be a chance :)

----------------------------------------
Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case

Written by

[39]Joseph Cox

Contributor

*

July 22, 2016 // 07:50 AM EST
Copy This URL

Image: Shutterstock

A judge has ordered Yahoo to present a witness and provide documents
explaining how the company handles supposedly deleted emails.

The move comes in the appeal case of a drug trafficker who was
convicted, in part, because of emails Yahoo provided to law enforcement
that conspirators believed had been deleted.

Defense lawyers in the case claim that six months of deleted emails
were recovered—something [40]which Yahoo's policies state is not
possible. The defense therefore speculates that the emails may have
instead been collected by real-time interception or an NSA surveillance
program.

United States Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James, from a San Francisco
court, [41]granted the defense's motion for discovery in an order filed
on Wednesday.

[42]The case revolves around Russell Knaggs, from Yorkshire, England,
and a single Yahoo mail account. In 2009, Knaggs orchestrated a plan to
import five tonnes of cocaine from South America. At the time, Knaggs
was already serving a 16-year prison sentence for another drug crime.

As part of the operation, a collaborator in Colombia would log into the
email account “***@ymail.com” and write a draft email. An
accomplice based in Europe would then read the message, delete it from
both the “draft” and “trash” folders, and write his own draft, in an
effort not to leave behind any messages that could later be read by law
enforcement.

The defense alleges there should have been nothing for law enforcement to
find

Sukhdev Thumber, a solicitor representing Knaggs in the UK proceedings,
[43]previously told Motherboard that the pair would sometimes simply
remove the text in the draft with the backspace key, rather than
deleting the email. Knaggs didn't actually use the account himself.

After receiving requests from UK police and the FBI in September 2009
and April 2010, Yahoo created several “snapshots” of the email account,
preserving its contents at the time—and revealing the messages. But the
defense alleges there should have been nothing for law enforcement to
find.

Yahoo's explanation is that the recovered emails were copies created by
the [44]email service's “auto-save” feature, which saves data in case
of a loss of connectivity, for example. The company has filed several
declarations from a number of its staff, but the defense said some of
those contradicted each other, and it wants more information.

The defense requested a half-day deposition and a wide range of
documents related to the design of Yahoo's email and retention system,
a copy of the retention software source code, and instruction manuals
for the peripheral equipment that was used to retrieve the emails.

But Yahoo has described the request as a “fishing expedition” and
“unreasonably intrusive.” Judge James agreed somewhat, and instead
ordered the company to release a more limited list of documents, and
prepare a witness to talk about specific topics, relating only to the
email account in question. If necessary, the documents will be filed
under a protective order.

Yahoo has until August 31 to produce a witness for the deposition and
provide any documents.

Thumber from the defense told Motherboard in an email, "We are very
pleased with the Judge's decision who was able to see the obvious
contradictions and problems with Yahoo's explanations. Once we obtain
the material, the same will be reviewed in order to advance our UK
appeal."

Topics: [45]yahoo, [46]email, [47]uk police, [48]FBI, [49]deleted
emails, [50]crime, [51]Russell Knaggs
Contact the author by [52]email or [53]Twitter.
You can reach us at [54]***@motherboard.tv. Want to see other
people talking about Motherboard? Check out our [55]letters to the
editor.

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[60]New Tor Site 'Netpoleaks' Helps Whistleblowers Report on UK
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References

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