The Associated Press clears up a little misunderstanding about the Petraeus scandal. The CIA Director and his mistress Paula Broadwell weren't sending racy emails to each other. Oh, no, they were much too clever for that.
FBI agents traced the alleged cyber harassment [of Tampa socialite Jill Kelley] to Broadwell, the officials said, and discovered she was exchanging intimate messages with a private Gmail account. Further investigation revealed the account belonged to Petraeus under an alias.
Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teenagers alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said.
Rather than transmitting emails to the other's inbox, they composed at least some messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic "dropbox," the official said. Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail that is easier to trace.
(Emphasis mine.) Do the terrorists and teenagers routinely practice this clandestine shared-account communication on the world's most popular web mail service? Wouldn't it have made more sense to open an account on a much smaller service with less aggressive data tracking policies?
