Brainteaser for you computer nerds out there
 

Here is a tough one for ya...I'd like to get copies of my AOL emails from, say, two years ago. But AOL telephone support claims they delete all emails after seven days and store nothing permanently. Well, I am a computer programmer, and I have a hard time believing they don't keep backups. Ahhh...but how do I get to them? Any ideas? In theory the emails are my intellectual property, right? Is there some legal device I can use to make AOL cough up the goods? Any software methods? Vast online archives somewhere?

You could mount a Mission Impossible style raid to break into the ultra secure Customer Email Backup Vault and retreive the files.


BTW, this message will self destruct in 5 seconds.

They are undoubtedly on some archival system somewhere. If the feds wanted them you can bet they would cough them up. As for you getting to them...

I'd be amazed if they kept backups of that sort of thing for that long. Good luck.

here at the university we keep emails for ahwile but if someone wants to get ahold of a backup to retreive say something they deleted accidentily, it takes an act of congress to get it. It basicly has to have huge consequences for the university for us to run a tape back and retrieve it and it's not easily done technicaly either since most of the backup tape drives run most of the night and we try not to touch the production machines during the day.

Also for space reasons I'm not suprised at all on AOL's policy. Think of the amount of spam that they get all filling up inboxes. It's not a small problem at all storing that much data. To find one persons emails from 2 years ago? Wouldn't be easy at all.


might be SOL but the best way would probably be raise a huge fuss. I hate to say it but making a fuss does help out when dealing with tech support sometimes especially if you go up the foodchain.

didn't stay at a holiday inn express last night, but I did spend 8 hours today in the univ. network operating center and answering helpdesk calls.

They have millions of customers who collectively get tens of millions of emails per day times +/-700 days.

That's a lot of data. It'll be on a DAT or DLT, linear, your data will span multiple tapes.

If you lived to be 150 they could never make enough money off of you in your lifetime to cover the cost of retrieving stuff for you that they never promised to back up for you.

Not trying to be an ass, just realistic.

Regards,
Scott

it's probably in their policy ( that thing you agree to ) that the information transmitted through AOL servers is the property of AOL.
any backups are for their benefit, not yours.