The disappearance of the Secret Service’s text messages from January 6, 2021 is a data preservation issue, so I’m briefly reviving this blog from its long sleep to analyze it the best I can.
What we know
“Text messages” sent between Secret Service phones on January 6, 2021, during the unrest in Washington, DC, became unavailable within the bureau. News reporting has gotten so bad that it’s hard to find out just what this means; this CNN article contains more detail than most of the reports I’ve found.
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Email migration
Recently I migrated my email to a new host and discovered a hazard I hadn’t known about before. I didn’t lose anything, but I came closer to it than I would have liked. Since it’s a personal digital preservation issue, it merits a rare post on this blog.
There are two widely used open protocols for email clients: POP3 and IMAP. The latter is far more widely used today, because it lets you synchronize your mailboxes across multiple devices. The downside is that your mail lives on the server and may or may not be saved on your client. If you change your mailbox to a new server, all your existing mail could disappear. As long as you haven’t terminated the old service, you should be able to get it back, but it could be a pain.
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Tagged email, preservation