[steve]

... including text messages and call logs ?? i have a friend that insists that for privacy the way to go is text messages. i feel that texting leaves a much easier trail to follow for anyone interested. i also feel that voice (old fashioned talking) is much safer because there is no PERMANENT record of the conversation. the only way to interfere would be real time...(in other words they would haver to listen in).

what do you think ? how long are those records there ? who can get access and for what reasons ?

NO i am not a mob hit man. i just value my privacy in an obsessive way and the subject came up over beers.....

[JeffP]

You could ask Kwame Kilpatrick, Mayor of Detroit, what he thinks about the privacy of text messaging.

Voice is permanent if being recorded by either party or even a third party.

If you don't want it known by the masses, don't say it and don't type it.

[steve]

that was kind of my take on it and for some reason he would not believe me...ill show him that news article.

[R J Staub]

could be wrong, but I think all cell phones are now digital for both voice & text. It's easier to record digital. Are they doing it? Who knows for sure?

If anyone is using VOIP for their home service, that is digital for sure.

I'd say that the carriers are recording the caller id, who they are calling and recording the call while it is going on.. & if they are recording anything, once a trigger word is captured, then the recording is kept for a longer period of time... if no trigger word, then I doubt if they'd keep the complete conversation for long. Same kind of thing for internet traffic.. again, digital... they record the user'd id and the address of the site you went to.. will they keep every last character of the traffic, I doubt it, unless you are going to some site that is really off the wall or illegal. Then they might record the actual bits of data so that they could re-create it. maybe track what you download.

Again, are they doing it for everything? I doubt it. But?

[steve]

my buddies argument was that there is no way they could monitor all text messages because of all the data, but it was easy to listen to key words on open airways. my rebuttal was that text messages were easily recorded because they are hard data, and voice data was so massive that they could never record it all....therefore they would have to be listening at the exact time of the call for some reason.

fact being text leaves a hard trail and voice is more "intangible", for a beter word.

maybe we were both wrong. he was talking about sending someone an intimidating message and the conversation blossomed...

[Jimbro727]

Given the options of voice OR texting, I'd vote voice. Both have their advantages, if we're assuming both are being recorded. Text messages are stored on your phone, and I am sure it is possible to retrieve them even after you've deleted them - at least for a certain period of time after you've deleted them. However, with text messages, you have the ability to deny that it was you who sent them. Someone could have always taken your phone, or I'm sure you can all imagine a hundred different other scenarios (if you had to) that would point to someone other than you. You don't have that level of deniablity with voice, if it is recorded.

Text messages are most likely stored on the provider's end, at least temporariliy, since they are usually queued, at some point, for delivery. On whatever systems store that queue, I'm sure there's a way to retrieve them, even after being deleted, by a determined party. By nature of how voice calls work, there is no reason to assume they're being recorded, even though they very well might be, recording phone conversations isn't a part of the system, whereas storing text messages is, at least at some point, part of that system.

The safest way would probably be to text the person to meet you somewhere very public, if it mattered that much.

[Overkillphil]

Just ask a good private eye or detective, if you can find one.

BTW, hope she's worth the effort.