Can I Save an Email Directly Onto my Hardrive?

[hawkeyehawks]

Hi :-) First post for me.

Is there a way to save a full copy of an email sent by or received via fastmail, including the header, showing sender,date,time directly onto your hard drive?

I am thinking in terms of having a hard copy as evidence that clearly shows the content of the email, and that it it was in fact the content of an email sent by Mr'X on a certain day and time. Just in case Mr X is able to hack into my email account and either change my password or delete an email he sent.

Something that could pass the standards of a court of law as being admissible evidence.

Something that someone could not claim that it is just a document I just made up.and wrote myself.

Is there a save as option in fastmail?

I am looking for a hard copy of an email received by my fastmail account that would be an exact duplicate of how it appears on my monitor when I open the email.

I suppose i could take a screen shot, but there must be a better way, since a screen shot can be altered.

Never mind I just answered my own question - use the "save as" function of my browser, :-) doh

Is there a way to delete a post on this forum.?

[janusz]

Originally Posted by hawkeyehawks

Never mind I just answered my own question - use the "save as" function of my browser, :-) doh

Is there a way to delete a post on this forum.?

1. Anything on your hard drive can be altered.
2. You can delete your own post, but not when it's the 1st one in a thread.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by hawkeyehawks

Something that could pass the standards of a court of law as being admissible evidence.

Welcome to the forums!

It is relatively easy for someone technically competent to fake or modify emails, unless some special steps are taken. If you need proof that messages were really sent and had the claimed content, then they need "digital signatures". If you want to pursue this, you can read about one of the popular methods here. Be aware that this will need the cooperation of your Mr X.

With such cooperation, it may just be easier to agree copies be sent to a trusted third party.

[bramhall]

Originally Posted by hawkeyehawks

Just in case Mr X is able to hack into my email account and either change my password or delete an email he sent

Originally Posted by BritTim

With such cooperation, it may just be easier to agree copies be sent to a trusted third party.

I don't seem much of a co-operationhere if Mr X is deemed inclined to hack into the recipient's account Therefore the chance of his agreeing to use a trusted third party seem negligibly small.

AFAIK it's not that trivial to modify (as opposed to delete) emails on the server even when logged in (legally or otherwise) to an email account.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by bramhall

AFAIK it's not that trivial to modify (as opposed to delete) emails on the server even when logged in (legally or otherwise) to an email account.

For email servers that support IMAP (pretty much all these days, and certainly including FM) modifying messages is sadly easily done from a client script using the IMAP protocol. In fact, there are even pre-built tools such as HeaderToolsLite, a Thunderbird extension, that allow someone to do it without writing any code.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by bramhall

I don't seem much of a co-operation here if Mr X is deemed inclined to hack into the recipient's account Therefore the chance of his agreeing to use a trusted third party seem negligibly small.

It is not that rare for parties who wish to protect themselves in business to agree to third party "referees". A common example is the use of escrow agents. A specific prospective business associate may resist this, but you then need to carefully consider the wisdom of proceeding.

[bramhall]

Originally Posted by BritTim

For email servers that support IMAP [...] modifying messages is sadly easily done

...ouch...

[William9]

There are add-on services to email accounts the perform a non-editable archive. Google Apps for business and LuxSci both provide that service for an additional cost. Some types of businesses are required by law to keep such an archive.

[paul29]

Originally Posted by hawkeyehawks

Is there a way to save a full copy of an email sent by or received via fastmail, including the header, showing sender,date,time directly onto your hard drive?

Press the "more" button and select "show raw message" which will give you all the headers, which you can then save. They're not authenticated by FM but if you're doing this because of a specific legal situation, ask your lawyer whether that type of authentication is really likely to matter. Unless there's a serious authenticity challenge I'd expect it's enough that you just certify that the thing you are filing is a true copy.

[randombox]

I guess hawkeyehawks stated that s/he has answered the question originally posted but using Mozilla Thunderbird could be another potential solution to backing up Fastmail emails to the users local drive (HDD/SSD).
One can use Thunderbird for almost any webmail account' correspondences.