exchange - queries

[klop]

Odd questions but can you help??

Thinking of having exchange; could peeps please confirm any of the following?

If we have 2003, 2007 or 2010 (or even 2000) am i right in thinking as admin (or any domain/enterprise admin) all other users mailboxes are unavailable by default?
To access mailboxes contents (read their mail) i would need to set new permissions, deliberatly for solely that purpose?

Also if i were to do that and then access others mailboxes would there be a trail?
Could it be shown that i had / or hadn't?

I appreciate i could easily access via owa or simillar (so long as i know the password) but i'm more interested in what can be done direct from the server itself?


We've had odd probs with some staff and email accounts in the past, i want to make certain i'm not settng myself up for a fall!

cheers for all help.. sorry to be asking such newbie strange questions :-)

[Edu-IT]

What I would suggest is journaling. Then, if you have issues, you can login to the journaling account and carry out whatever you need to do. I'm sure there will be a way of auditing when this account is logged into and where from.

[klop]

cheers, not too sure what journalling is.. shall have a read up about it :-)

[Edu-IT]

cheers, not too sure what journalling is.. shall have a read up about it :-)

All incoming/outgoing email is copied to a seperate email address, along with the message headers.

On a weekly/monthly/yearly basis you can then export this mail in Outlook for archiving.