[NBLUG/talk] Could a chat be an alibi?

S. Saunders sms at sonic.net
Thu Jul 12 12:09:49 PDT 2007


On Tue, June 26, 2007 10:59, Jack Smith wrote:

> Just idle speculation, but I was wondering if e-mails or chats could be
> used as alibis?  Whether any of the intermediate computers (or the
> sending and receiving ones) keep track of IP addresses and the
> messages?  Even temporarily?  Sure, you could log into your home
> computer remotely and fake it, but does anything remember stuff like
> this?

e-mail's not so much, no.  Easy enough to pre-write the letter, and have
the computer scheduled to "Send" the moment you plan to be sinking
the knife into your victim.  Trivial, really, and has been for decades.  I
regularly spend a day or more *writing* a letter, then send it when I've
got the content I want; so do many others, I know.  As "evidence" it
isn't, really.

Chatting... hmmm.  AFAIK, most servers don't keep logs of every keystroke,
with timestamp.  Given the standard "one sec, AFK, BRB" sort of thing in
chat, I'd hate to have to rely on that, if *I* were the accused!

Thing is, it doesn't take much in the way of _l33t_hax0r_sk1LLz_ to
backdoor yourself (e.g. via a pirated WiFi signal) a way INTO your
computer, so that your own ISP cannot tell that the computer isn't
originating the data-stream... and that's *IF* your ISP even logs the chat
closely-enough that it "could" provide an alibi if the data were
trustworthy...

AFAIK, nobody's tried an "e-alibi" like that.  Mostly, chat's and e-mails
provide *incriminating* evidence (due to content, not timestamp), rather
than vice versa... ;-)


- Steve S.





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