Ghosts in Your Machine

True or false: When you remove an e-mail from your "deleted" items folder, it's gone forever. If you said true, you may be surprised when an e-mail you thought you'd killed comes back to haunt you.

E-mails rarely are permanently deleted. Although you remove them from your e-mail program, "ghost" versions may stay in the digital archives of your mail server.

Confused? Think of it this way. When you view messages in your e-mail program-Outlook, Lotus Notes-you're really looking into the mail server, where all employees' messages are kept. Your e-mail program is basically a window into that other world, where the real action happens.

Organizations save e-mails for a variety of reasons. Some want the option of retrieving messages that employees erased accidentally. But federal agencies have a more compelling need to save e-mail: It's the law.

According to the National Archives and Records Administration, which sets the rules for maintaining official documents, e-mails can be federal records, which the agency defines as "anything you create or receive during the course of your work." That means spreadsheets, photographs, maps, audio and videotapes and, yes, e-mails.

An organization can permanently delete e-mail-that is, erase it from the server-only if it has permission from NARA. (The agency offers advice on how to maintain e-mail archives at www.archives.gov/records_management.) And while workplace policies on saving e-mail will differ, it's safe to assume that anything you've ever written in an e-mail can be used against you.