I have been told that yahoo has all instant message logs saved
according to IP addresses and user ID's and that they could be
subpeonaed for evidence in court. Is this true?

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Clarification of Question by memememememe-ga on 22 Mar 2006 04:35 PST

What I want to know is what does Yahoo keep, if anything, that can be subpeonaed.

You probably won't be able to find this out until you actually subpeona them.

there can be no subpeona to this sort of information because it is
personal and private. I believe this is just a rumour made by the
recent chinese problems and search result subpeona got out of control.
However your emails and other information stored by yahoo can be
legally obtained if a warrent is issued. This however would require a
good cause, in theory, before a warrent would be issued. If you have
yahoo messenger logging it is only stored on the local machine and not
in yahoo servers so they can not be obtained without taking your hard
drive. You should be more worried that your IM conversations are not
encrypted and can be read. If you truely seek privacy I would suggest
you download gaim and use that to connect to yahoo IM and get the
encrypting plugin.