'Private' messages often open secrets
Don't send any text messages or e-mails you don't want to see in the newspaper was a lesson Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick learned this week, and one repeated by area attorneys and business consultants.
"I advise everyone and practice it absolutely. I don't send anything I don't want public," said Mark Malven, leader of the technology transaction practice in the Bloomfield Hills office of Dykema Gossett P.L.L.C. "I don't put anything sensitive into an e-mail or a text message that I wouldn't want to see in the newspaper. Executives have come crashing to the ground. Companies get ruined."
Service providers say they erase text messages from their servers — AT&T deletes messages after 72 hours, according to spokesperson Howard Riefs, and others do so in times ranging up to two weeks — but you shouldn't rely on that, say industry professionals.
