Are emails personal property

Answer 1

Yes, because it's written to and for you.

2nd Anwer: Yes, emails are personal property. You can be prosecuted for the destroy of personal property for invading/hacking someone's email account and messing with it.

Answer 2

Although E-mail is supposedly private and believed to be confidential, there are many ways that E-mails can be found, seen, and read -- even if you have deleted them.

Violations of the E-mail provider's Terms of Service (TOS)

First, E-mail providers do not read your E-mails, unless your E-mail is sent in to the provider's "TOS" Team. These teams have different names at different provider companies, but the teams look at abuse, harassment, and other violations of their TOS rules/contracts. For example, some E-mail providers look for people who send mail to numerous people at one--considered to be spamming. Some providers close accounts because of spam-activities.

Legalities -- by subpoena

Although an E-mail provider does not go into your account and read E-mails you send or receive, the E-mails are archived. Your activities are also logged (to some extent). If the company's records are subpoenaed, the company must turn over all records concerning your account, including E-mails received and sent. The authorities may also look at times you signed on and off from an internet Provider or E-mail Provider.

Legalities -- Forensics

A specialized area of forensics has grown from the need to investigate Internet crimes, or crimes that may have been planned via the Internet. Even if a person deletes all of his E-mails (sent and received), deleted the Browser Temp Files and History, etc., Forensic Specialists can recover these files by using specialized software that looks at the harddrive, its partitions, and its sectors. Even though computer files are stored in pieces across many areas of a harddrive,a forensics specialist can track those pieces across the harddrive and piece the item back together. Often, they can retrieve over 90%, even if the files are randomly split up (as typical computers do with data).

Minor Children

As minors, children have few "rights" to Internet privacy from their parents. A parent is expected to manage, control, oversee, and guide a minor child. So, a parent who reads their child's E-mail files would not be doing anything illegal.

Minor Children and Victimization

The Internet, including E-mails and IMs, exposes children to higher risks of victimization. Predators often try to isolate kids away from being seen. E-mails can be used to send porn images (just like with cell phones). So all parents should regularly review their child's E-mails (check under Old and Deleted, as well as New and Sent) and what the child downloads.