All old emails have disappeared

[rhythm_man]

My wife's ntlworld.com emails over probably 20 years or more have disappeared. She can see today's emails and one from yesterday and that's it. If I log in to her account from my mobile I get the same result. My ntlworld.com email account (which is the primary one) was seemingly OK, however I've just checked how far back my email history goes and it's only as far back as Feb 2023. Can VM recover these messages please?

[jpeg1]

Are you looking at your emails with an email app, or webmail using a browser? 

Webmail is the best way to check all emails.  Check that they haven't moved into any other folders, and that there are no filters set.  VM don't keep backups of emails - they recommend users to keep offline backups.

Are these email accounts linked to your current VM broadband account?  If not they may be in the process of being closed.

[Tom_W1]

Hi @rhythm_man thanks for your post here although we're sorry to hear of the concerns you've raised here.

Please follow the advice provided by @jpeg1 and ensure no filters are selected, hopefully this will provide a straight forward fix for you.

Many thanks

[rhythm_man]

It's disappointing that VM doesn't back up customer data when it's a paid-for service. Also disappointing that there's no security warning (e.g by text message) asking you to confirm that you want to redirect and delete tens of thousands of emails, probably amounting to several GB. I also don't recall reading that our emails weren't safe and needed to be backed up. Makes me wonder if VM perceive a benefit in customer data being wiped clean.

Anyway, ultimately the 'fault' appears to be due to a hacker setting up a redirect to their account.

I clearly need to backup my own account, which I believe means I have to install an email client. Once I've done so, how do I get it to download all my emails going back years, including ones in archive folders, please?

[jpeg1]

Yes I can understand your disappointment. 

It's been said on here that email is not a paid-for service but a free add-on.  Certainly they didn't reduce the broadband price when they stopped issuing new email addresses a couple of years ago.

If the hacker simply deleted emails, they would still be in the Trash folder. But even that gets cleared automatically after a period.  

My advice is to move to new emails at another provider, because VM clearly don't see their own service having a future.