Retrieving instant messages/emails

A lady my wife works with is going through what looks to be a very bitter divorce. Yesterday she told my wife that she suspects her husband has been talking to a woman via AOL instant messaging and email. According to her she can just log on using the husband’s user name and password and she is able to read all his IMs and his email, even the deleted ones.

Is this possible without using something like a keystroke reader program? I was under the impression that IMs were gone once you logged out and once you deleted emails from your deleted items folder they wer unrecoverable.

Some IM programs (Yahoo! is one I know of) can be set to automatically log all IM sessions. And most people say “deleted” when they mean “moved to the recycle bin or deleted items folder”. Some don’t even realize that “deleted” items aren’t really deleted until the folder is emptied.

FYI Even though the couple are still married, the correspondance between husband and possible girlfriend are private and the wife may be breaking the law if she reads them.