That stuff isn't gone forever, even if u delete it, it can be recovered. Ask my uncle when he gets outta jail...

What if we find a FML soon that connects to this one?

You didn't notice until you put it in the trash can? There could be a chance that they had already deleted things themselves but not emptied the trash. That or you're truly oblivious.

This is why I ALWAYS look at what I'm about to clear out of the trash before emptying it. You never know what you'll actually want to keep once you take a second look.

WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO SUCH A THING

How did you not notice that? More like F the life of the person the account actually belonged to.

that sucks sooo much, but how'd you accidentally get into someone else's account? You should probably let someone know they have such a flaw in the system

Maybe the person whose account it was should have logged out. Not your problem!

so it looks like a lot of people misunderstand the situation. if you log in to an account, the files you see are not on the local hard drive. that's what logging in is, it's connected to another computer called a server. this server is showing you the things stored on the server, like gmail. running recuva or any recovery software on your local computer will recover everything lost on your local computer and nothing of what was lost on the server. IT rarely has access to the server and recovering it server side requires server admin privileges. when a computer deletes something, usually, it just replaces the first letter of the file name and rather than delete, considers the space previously used as free space. as long as that free space doesn't get used, it's still the same content it was before. this is how recuva and most other recovery programs work - they look for renamed files that still exist. generally, since most users don't delete and add files much, that space is largely untouched and recovery is possible. on servers, this is different because the server is constantly adding thousands of files and deleting the same from students. so once that file space is freed, it's likely written over by a hundreds of rewrites. chances are, by the time IT contacts the server admin, recovery programs are useless. the person who stayed logged in deserves it - like anyone who leaves their account logged in anywhere, the entire point of logging in is to log out and prevent unauthorized access. at least it was only a final paper in a fake subject like poli sci and not a PhD thesis on drug synthesis for cancer cures. usually, by the time people are doing serious academic work, the silly stuff like misunderstanding what/where a file is is long past. sigh. undergrads.

How did you not notice?