Reply #47: Why would a router record the contents of a mail message?

[moggie]

None of the routers I've worked with did that: it's not a router function. Perhaps you mean "mail relay" (at the application layer)? But there, the message will generally be stored on the relay only until it's been successfully delivered to the next hop, at which point it's deleted from the queue: typically, it may be accessible on the relay for only a few seconds, assuming the next hop is reachable and accepting mail. The log messages are a different matter: the mail software on the relay will log the messages it handles, and most ISPs will keep these logs for a long time. But the log entry won't tell you the content of the message.