Did You Know That the Phone Company Keeps Records of Voice Messages for Twelve Months and Text Messages for Three Months?
Be careful what you write in text messages and understand that any voice message you leave may be discoverable and come back to haunt you one day when you least expect it.
I recently received a call from a friend of mine who was engaged in heated litigation and when defense lawyers received copies of his client’s text messages he placed and received over a period of months, not only were they detrimental to his case, but also caused the client much more grief with his spouse after she discovered romantic messages sent to him from another lady.
I am fond of using the quote that “chance favors the prepared mind” and am quite concerned today as an experienced Philadelphia personal injury lawyer that social networking via cell phones, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites reveal too much of our lives to the world. What happened to privacy and keeping our personal business confined to ourselves?
Case law allows the discovery of such information in litigation and therefore I always urge my clients to shut down any and all social networking sites during the pendency of litigation and always remind my clients and the readers of this blog that when you post something into cyber space, there is almost always a permanent record of it that may come back to bite you one day.
Although each of the telephone companies has their own policies, I was recently informed that Verizon keeps records for 12 months, but only keeps text message records for 3 months. While this is what they claim, I believe it may very well be possible that many carriers retain these messages for a longer period of time and one should approach these issues most cautiously.
