Deleting emails is not the same as deleting emails to prevent disclosure. I delete emails all the time; I presume everyone does. The email being quoted here doesn't say anything about why Jones "deleted loads of emails". You are inferring more than is warranted.
I've never deleted a genuine email in my entire life. I've deleted thousands of emails, sometimes in one go, but I've never mentioned 'deleting loads of emails' it's "I deleted a shit load of spam today, it was a fucking boat load, you could feed a third world country!"
Perhaps yes he deleted a lot of spam, but no one on the planet considers them emails. Why would he be any different?
I try to go through and regularly delete emails I don't feel to be important. I archive the ones that I do want to keep, but the rest get deleted. I simply don't need to hold on to things like old conversations with my advisors about registration, emails from Facebook, Twitter, etc. containing updates, random emails amongst friends, and many more. I don't consider those to be spam, and some of them were definitely genuine email for the time, regardless of how you define something ambiguous like "genuine email", but I just don't feel the need to be a digital pack rat. There's a decent chance that I'm not the only one that feels this way.
a lot of places that are subject to FOI requests have policies in place to delete emails more than X months old (where X is given as part of the policy). Keeps costs down more than anything I think - FOI can be very expensive and time consuming (although it is a good thing).
Just a side question: I hardly ever delete emails (except for automatic reminders etc), and I always assumed that's the standard thing (I'm using gmail). But ionfish deletes emails, so I'm questioning my assumption.
I have in the past (when disk was a lot more expensive than it is now) deleted email that I was sure I'd never care about -- archives from projects that had concluded, for instance, and mostly consisted of "hey, can you come into my office for a minute" type stuff.
But I've never deleted sent messages. I pretty much have every message I've ever sent, minus a few here and there that perished due to hardware failure. This is mostly for CYA reasons but also just because it's a useful personal historical record.
I would be pretty suspicious if someone told me to go through my workstation and delete messages pertaining to a certain subject.
Although there are companies which, due to the legal climate they operate in, have information-destruction policies (basically keeping stuff for the amount of time legally required and NOT A DAY MORE), having a policy that's in effect all the time is a lot less suspect than requesting specific emails be destroyed.
I don't delete sent message either, but I do go through my inbox from time to time and clear out things I don't think I'll care about in the future. That may very well bite me in the ass later on, but that's why god invented backups.
Agreed, I've had email since I can remember and I'm only 21. Aside from them getting lost from formats, I have never deleted a genuine email.
Even with a piss poor search engine, it's better than my computer-dependent brain's attempt at memory. I've flat-out given up on remembering many things, I either have a note pad and pen or they end up on google Docs so I can retrieve them anywhere. (Edit: All I need is a good smartphone plan and Google Docs and Gmail can flat-out replace my need to remember anything)
