Garden City, NY – Experts: Cell Phones, Electronic Messages Never Private

Garden City, NY – Cell phones, instant messages and global positioning satellites are everywhere. But awareness that information sent over these devices is traceable doesn’t seem to be.

“I think people, in their lazy behavior, think they’re communicating one on one,” said John Donovan, a technology expert whose company, Telecom Visions Inc., is based in Garden City. “But there’s no real guarantee of privacy.”

And these devices can be instruments of undoing for those who run afoul of the law.

People seem to forget that electronic communications can easily be monitored, or retrieved later, Donovan said.

Savvy computer hackers can tap into text messages just as easily as they can access a computer’s instant messages, Donovan said.

David Gitkos, an expert in computer forensics with Global Digital Forensics, near Tampa, Fla., said the cases he’s investigated show a pattern.

“If you watch the news, you know these things can happen,” Gitkos said. “But they send it and that’s it. They think no one will ever see it.”

But even when text messages are deleted from a cell phone, they’re really not gone, Gitkos said.

“Pretty much every thing is recoverable,” Gitkos said. “A general rule is, don’t put anything in an e-mail that you don’t want to be made public.”