IM and privacy: a primer worth revisiting post-Foley

My NPR News colleague Laura Sydell did a radio piece earlier this week about the basics of instant messaging privacy, a topic of renewed interest in light of Congressman Mark Foley's digitally documented misdeeds.

Some aspects of the NPR story may be old news to regular readers of this blog, for instance: the revelation that the words you type into AIM or MSN Messenger don't just waft into ether, they can -- shock! -- be saved by the recipient or the carrier.

But Sydell also delves into what each IM service provider discloses about their data retention policies, and who shares what with whom, under what circumstances.

Link to archived audio and an interview that NPR's Melody Joy Kramer conducted via IM with Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist at the EFF. The image at top left in this post is, of course, not a transcript of *their* IM exchange, but rather of one reported to have taken place between Foley and a teenage boy.