Lost email

#1

I’ve had this problem several times, and support seems unable to help. In a nutshell, I’m missing tons of email that I know wasn’t downloaded.

In the last case (now), I was on vacation for two weeks (9/8-22), and checked webmail several times to access things like a couple of password verification emails, etc. (so I know the emails were actually there…).

I never have my home PC download email automatically, but only manually. No one has access to it, and the mail was in webmail when I did check it. When I returned home and downloaded it today, I only got email from 9/20 to today. Hundreds (probably over 1500) emails are not there (9/8-9/19).

Support only says (the last time this happened, a month or so ago) that someone had to have downloaded it and that they can’t restore it.

Anyone have suggestions or any idea what could be happening here? I’ve been doing Internet email (heck, it’s my day job, supporting this sort of thing… :slight_smile: ), and I can’t see where this could be going, unless someone else does have the passwords, but why would they only steal the mail these times? :slight_smile: I’m not missing mail at any other times.

And, this time here is suspiciously close to the other mail problem DH had around 9/20. Could be a coincidence… However, I can’t put up with missing 13 days of emails; that’s unacceptable.

Lee

#2

Lee,

Given the volume of mail you described, have you checked the “old-messages” folder in webmail? That folder is not subscribed by default at DreamHost, though the default fault settings for moving mail from your inbox into it is such that you may well have a whole bunch of mail sitting there.

I’m assuming you know how to configure that to your liking; I’ve just found that often users forget about it as they generally keep their mail “cleaned up” until a vacation or some other event prevents them from accessing their mail as often as they normally do.

Without making other arrangements, neither POP nor IMAP will “by default” grab the contents of “old-messages”, and stuff can end up there based on age or by quantity of mail in the inbox.

Just a suggestion on something you might want to check. :wink:

–rlparker

#3

Good idea, but I had already poked around in my shell account trying to find anything. Nothing anywhere, and it’s (old-messages is empty) not there in webmail either.

This is particularly strange since as lately as a few days ago, a ton was there (but I can’t guarantee it was after 9/20).

I was hoping we had the snapshot backups, but that appears to be only for web servers.

I wonder if we have the power in shell accounts to roll our own cron-powered backups of the Maildir? :slight_smile: (I’m not really joking. I can’t deal with this sort of flakiness for email.)

Lee

#4

I think you can check your mail folders from the snapshot. May try emailing support to ask if that is possible.

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#5

Well, support is so clueless they are trying to tell me that the 250 read email limit that was on (for archiving) applies to all email (unread/read, etc.). I sent them back a note asking them to read their own panel prompts, and see what they say now.

(And, no, the checkbox for ‘apply to unread’ wasn’t checked.)

Lee