FINALLY, maybe people will stop believing that screenshots are trustworthy. I like to show people how easy it is to edit web pages with built-in tools on the browser. It’s amazing to me that printouts of web pages (bank statements, for instance) are ever acceptable.
I used to demonstrate email's unreliability by sending an email with a faked From address, then showing that I could add that very email, timestamps and all, to their Sent folder in Outlook Express across the network.
Mailboxes are just files on your hard disk. Outlook Express's were simple plain text files, of all the messages in sequence, and it parsed them out when you opened the box in the program. Thunderbird's are similar. Outlook itself uses a more complicated binary format.
But anyway: Your "Sent folder" is just a giant text file. And if you know where the file is, you can open it up in Notepad and add emails, or edit emails, directly, without ever needing to open the program. All you need is a way to see the hard disk's files remotely - and there's hundreds of those, either working-as-intended on a work network or just sloppily configured at home.
In this case, it's not "security" at all. There's no particular reason to stop you from changing mail in your mailbox - there's no usage where stopping you would really matter. And it has to store the email somewhere, so why *not* in a simple text format?
I think the purpose of a screenshot of a tweet isn't to prove it was said so much as to escalate the assertion. If I say you said something on Twitter, and you didn't, I can say "Oh, I was sure you did, my bad, sorry!". But if I show a screenshot I say I took myself, and you didn't say that exact thing, then I am shown to be a deliberate liar with malice aforethought. It's more trustworthy because I've put my credibility on the line over it to a greater extent.
Of course if I don't have any credibility to stake, none of this applies :-)
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-23 09:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-23 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-23 09:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-23 10:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-03-23 11:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-23 11:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-25 07:12 pm (UTC)I stopped using Outlook ages ago.
Not for security reasons -- it just irritated me.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-25 08:00 pm (UTC)But anyway: Your "Sent folder" is just a giant text file. And if you know where the file is, you can open it up in Notepad and add emails, or edit emails, directly, without ever needing to open the program. All you need is a way to see the hard disk's files remotely - and there's hundreds of those, either working-as-intended on a work network or just sloppily configured at home.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-25 08:20 pm (UTC)Just goes to show most security is just to keep out the honest and/or lazy.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-25 08:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-24 09:36 am (UTC)Of course if I don't have any credibility to stake, none of this applies :-)
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Date: 2012-03-24 05:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-24 05:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-24 02:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-24 06:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-25 07:13 pm (UTC)