Auto deletion of emails after 3 months

[mikeymikec]

nvm

 

[Brovane]

My company is implementing the compulsory auto deletion of emails after 3 months. They say one of the reasons for this is that there's a possibility the company could have to pay a charge per saved email for some third party to go through all of a person's emails or something, in certain circumstances. Or if someone hacked into our email system, large quantities of emails means large cost or large risk or something. My company also claims that auto deletion after 3 months will save on IT resources.

Are these risks real? Has anyone heard of companies that do this?

Where I work we are the exact opposite. They retain all e-mail in a archive system. Even deleted e-mail is retained in archives. Storage is cheap so and the archive system is searchable.

 

[Jimzz]

Did your company recently hire some IT people that use to work for the IRS?


* Plausible deniability

 

[gorcorps]

Our company uses a vault service. After 3 months things are moved from the local server to the vault, and you can search that to find anything you need to reopen

 

[Printer Bandit]

I wish there was an auto delete for our post history here. All threads older than 3 months get nuked.

 

[Rover321]

I wish there was an auto delete for our post history here. All threads older than 3 months get nuked.

That would be ok for off topic but for technical forums that would tragic.

 

[Miramonti]

Lemme guess, you work for a company once known as Blackwater? lol

In a case like that, I can understand it. But from day to day operations and relations with clients, investors, and prospects, vendors, suppliers, and on and on, not having copies of communications can work against said company as much or more than it can help it.

In a situation like this, I would be highly concerned this has become a policy to get rid of potentially damaging sh!t they know already exists, than it is to prevent avoidable future costs or inconveniences. You'll know in a year, after they've gotten rid of their damaging archives, and they change the policy back again to retain and backup all emails.

 

[brianmanahan]

I wish there was an auto delete for our post history here. All threads older than 3 months get nuked.

go back and edit them 3 months later

i have seen a guy on bogleheads do this. after 1 month, he edits every single post he has made to '..'. every. single. one.

 

[PowerEngineer]

Where I work we are the exact opposite. They retain all e-mail in a archive system. Even deleted e-mail is retained in archives. Storage is cheap so and the archive system is searchable.

As suggested earlier, OP's company is almost certainly retaining an archive of all emails. They just don't want to have to look for emails all across their IT network (e.g. local drives) when necessary as part of the discovery process for a lawsuit or regulatory investigation.

You want to see all emails from two years ago relating to so-and-so topic? Well, the only kept copies are in our email archive which we can easily filter for you.

 

[shabby]

Has anyone heard of companies that do this?

What is it exactly your company does?

 

[Markbnj]

Many corporations have retention policies, exactly for the reasons described. Emails are discoverable during legal proceedings, and the company may indeed have to pay for trawling through every email in the preserved history in order to provide relevant documents. It's not hard to see why the best thing is to keep it as short a time as permissible.