rw: Subpoenas can undelete any Gmail (Cnet via SEW):
The subpoena asks for not only current e-mail but also deleted e-mail: "All documents concerning all Gmail accounts of Baker...for the period from Jan. 1, 2003, to present, including but not limited to all e-mails and messages stored in all mailboxes, folders, in-boxes, sent items and deleted items, and all links to related Web pages contained in such e-mail messages."
Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages "may remain in our offline backup systems" in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted.
do hotmail, yahoo, etc guarantee that deleted messages are deleted completely? what do they say about it?