Phone hacking email deletion branded "storm in teacup"

[Simon]

The furore over deleted News International emails has been blown out of proportion, according to one email management expert.

The deletion of emails hit the headlines this week, with stories emerging from a phone hacking select committee hearing that showed News International had ordered more than 200,000 messages to be deleted.

The deletions emerged after Indian IT company HCL revealed it had been asked to delete internal emails on nine occasions between April 2010 and July 2011.

But according to Mimecast, the vast majority of the emails would have had no value to investigators and were computer-generated responses.

"The majority of the email deletions, some 200,000, were for things like delivery failure messages and would have had no forensic evidence whatsoever," Barry Gill, enterprise consultant at Mimecast, told PC Pro.

Read more: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/369094/phone-hacking-email-deletion-branded-storm-in-teacup

[drummer]

However, the link also suggests that:

...according to Mimecast, there are still questions that need to be answered, particularly about email accounts that were requested to be deleted after employees had left the company, arousing suspicions that the deletions could have been requested with the intention of covering up senior knowledge of the phone hacking within the organisation

"That is not standard practice in terms of compliance," [Gill] said.

"There's no clarity on that, but it would be unusual if the contractors were asked to delete emails – they would normally be asked to archive them on a separate system to conserve them while improving performance on the main email system."

It's still speculation but it does look rather odd - 200,000 messages email messages wouldn't trouble a 2GB memory stick.