After 180 days, the U.S. government considers your old emails "abandoned"

[kestrell]

From the article
Why You Should Delete Emails Instead of Archiving Them
by Chris Hoffman
https://www.howtogeek.com/709693/why-you-should-delete-emails-instead-of-archiving-them/

In the USA, emails are considered “abandoned” after 180 days. The government can look at these emails without a warrant thanks to the Electronic Communications Protection Act, a law passed in 1986 when electronic communications were very different.

As
Wired
https://www.wired.com/2013/06/how-ridiculous-is-it-that-email-but-not-mail-has-been-left-out-of-privacy-laws/
pointed out in 2013, “It’s beyond ridiculous that email (but not mail) has been left out of privacy laws.”

There have been attempts to fix this loophole and require the government to get a warrant before accessing emails over 180 days old. The most notable attempt was in 2016, when the Email Privacy Act
https://iapp.org/news/a/the-email-privacy-act-what-happened-and-where-we-are-now/
passed unanimously in the U.S. House of Representatives and went on to die in the Senate. As of January 2021, the law stands.

So, if you’re storing a lot of old emails in an online account, you should keep this in mind.

Time to Delete Those Old Useless Emails

Comments

[cvirtue]

ARGH

[dewline]

...no. Hell, no. I am maintaining those accounts actively, whatever I'm doing or not doing about those old e-mails stored therein.

So, no. Not "abandoned".

[jesse_the_k]

This is why I handle my IMAP accounts as if they were POP accounts.

Two months after they land in my mail client, I've sorted through and saved the ones I want. I routinely delete all mail older then two months.

[elusiveat]

This is an important message to get out there. The thing I would change about the message would be to focus more on the fact that it *is* possible to archive email locally. Hard drive space is not particularly expensive, and if you get into the habit of using a local email client, archiving can become a normal part of your workflow.

Just because cloud storage is wildly popular doesn't make it the only option.

[kestrell]

True, and some users, such as myself, never really got out of the habit of using external hard drives for backup, but many others have gotten used to automating the process, or, because of work, are compelled to automate everything.