The Sedona Conference Commentary on Ephemeral Messaging
The Sedona Conference · August 2021; published in The Sedona Conference Journal, Volume 22 (2021) · 2021
Access and status
Cost
Free
Free to read or download at source. No account, no purchase.
Status
Current
Current as at the verification date below. Standards and tools both move — confirm at source before you rely on it.
What it is
A consensus commentary on auto-deleting and disappearing-message applications: whether adopting them is defensible, what happens to the preservation duty when a trigger occurs, and how Rule 37(e) applies when messages are gone by design.
Who it is for, and when
Read it before advising a client on messaging policy and before bringing or defending a spoliation motion over Signal, Teams, or similar tools. Examiners should read it to understand why the question they are asked is usually "can you show the app was configured to delete, and when" rather than "can you recover the messages". It is the clearest available treatment of the intent-to-deprive problem in this setting.
What it does not cover
It is not binding, and courts have since gone various ways on the same facts, so it cannot be treated as settled law. It offers no technical method for recovering or proving deletion in any specific application. The PDF requires a free Sedona Conference account.
Go to the source
Open at thesedonaconference.org (opens in a new tab)https://thesedonaconference.org/publication/Commentary_on_Ephemeral_Messaging
Details
- Type
- Standard or guidance
- Written for
- Lawyers and courtsWorking examinerLawyers and courts, Working examiner
- Publisher
- The Sedona Conference
- Version verified
- August 2021; published in The Sedona Conference Journal, Volume 22 (2021)
- Year
- 2021
- Topics
- spoliation, preservation, ediscovery, evidence-handling
- Checked at source
- Standards are revised. Confirm the current revision with the publisher before citing this.
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