Disappearing emails

[BillD1]

Hi

I hope someone can help!
I use MailWasher to screen my emails.  Some of my emails appear in MailWasher but not in Virgin webmail.  Then they disappear from MailWasher.  I have contacted MailWasher support and they say it is not their program beacuse anything deleted by MailWasher goes into the recycle bin (the lost emails do not).  Nevertheless, I have re-installed MailWasher

Apparently, if the email is deleted by another program (Virgin?) then the email will disappear from MailWasher the next time it does a check for new emails

I have checked all folders in Virgin webmail - nothing!

Help!

[coenoby]

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@BillD1 wrote:

Some of my emails appear in MailWasher but not in Virgin webmail.  Then they disappear from MailWasher. 

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MailWasher downloads your emails from the VM server in the same way as an email app or client such as Microsoft Outlook.

So these missing emails would have appeared in your VM webmail account initially and then been deleted for some reason. As you say, once they get deleted from the VM server they would then disappear from MailWasher.

Do you use an email app or client (such as Outlook, Thunderbird or a mail app on your phone) in addition to MailWasher and VM Webmail to manage your VM email account?  If so, something in the app could be causing emails to be deleted from your VM account.

Coenoby

[BillD1]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.  I do use Thunderbird but when I switch from MailWasher (where I can see the emails) to Thunderbird I can't see them.  Then I go to Virgin webmail and they are not there either.  When I switch back to MailWasher they have either gone or will go shortly.

I have checked all the folders including Deleted and Junk in both Virgin webmail and Thunderbird - nothing!

[coenoby]

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@BillD1 wrote:

I do use Thunderbird but when I switch from MailWasher (where I can see the emails) to Thunderbird I can't see them.  Then I go to Virgin webmail and they are not there either.  When I switch back to MailWasher they have either gone or will go shortly.

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Thanks for that clarification.

If this was happening to my VM account the first thing I would do would be to check whether there are any filter rules set up in Thunderbird. It could be that a filter rule is deleting emails that fit the filter's criteria from the VM email server.

That would explain the sequence of events that you are seeing:

1. The emails are present in MallWasher when you first check it.
2. When you start/open Thunderbird those emails that fit the filter's criteria will automatically be deleted and so they will not be displayed in your Thunderbird folders.
3. When you open Webmail the emails will not appear in any of the folders in your webmail account - because Thunderbird has already deleted them from the VM server.
4. When you go back to MailWasher the emails will disappear the next time it checks your VM email account.

You can check the filter rules in Thunderbird :

• Open the Tools menu by clicking on Tools at the top of the main Thunderbird screen.
• Then click on Message Filters. 

I would make that simple check even if you are not aware of setting any filters.

Coenoby

[BillD1]

Hi

Thanks for your reply

I have checked and there are no filters set

I will try re-installing Thunderbird

[coenoby · Accepted solution]

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@BillD1 wrote:

I will try re-installing Thunderbird

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Personally I would trouble shoot whether it is something in Thunderbird  causing this by taking Thunderbird out of the equation for while.

Try just using MailWasher and Webmail without opening Thunderbird and see if emails still disappear when Thunderbird is not in the mix.

• If emails stop disappearing you can be pretty sure that Thunderbird was causing it and then investigate that further.
• However, if the disappearances still occur then Thunderbird can be ruled as the cause and you need to look elsewhere.

However, going back to the start of  this thread, you said "Some of my emails appear in MailWasher but not in Virgin webmail." and it might help if you consider whether you can identify any commonalities between this missing emails.

For example:

• do these disappearances happen regularly all the time or do they only happen on the odd occasion?
• are they all flagged as spam by Mailwasher or are they all flagged as genuine or is it a mixture of the two?
• are they all from a single sender or a small subset of senders?
• are these emails that you know about and recognise or are they emails from unexpected senders and subjects?
• do they have suspicious subject lines that, for example,  suggest they refer to transactions you don't recognise or password reset verifications you did not initiate?
• or is there something else that might link all these missing emails?

I ask that because in my experience, these things rarely happen completely at random and if you can identify a common theme that might give you an idea as to why they are the ones that disappear.

Coenoby

[BillD1]

Hi

Thanks again for your swift response.

I have played around with deleting emails in Thunderbird but that has ne effect on MailWasher - Mailwasher keeps the emails until I delete them there

I will try as you suggest to only use Mailwasher and webmail

As to commonality - they were all important!  They were all on my Friends list in MailWasher and nothing flagged up. They had sent me emails before successfully before. It happened a while back and then one day I watched as three important emails disappeared from MailWasher which prompted me to ask here

Thanks

Bill

[coenoby]

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@BillD1 wrote:

I will try as you suggest to only use Mailwasher and webmail

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That's good, let's see how that goes.

"As to commonality - they were all important!"

Sadly, any email that goes missing is always an important one, there's a law about that. 😉

"I have played around with deleting emails in Thunderbird but that has ne effect on MailWasher"

The thing is that just manually deleting an email in Thunderbird will only move the email from the inbox to the "Deleted" / "Trash" folder. That's why I suggested checking the filter rules in Thunderbird because there is an option there to remove an email from the POP3 VM email server which will cause the email to disappear completely which is what seems to be happening in this case.

Apologies, one thing I forgot to mention when I advised how to check the Filter Rules in Thunderbird is that Thunderbird holds a separate set of filter rules for each email address.

So if you have more than one email account set up in Thunderbird, then once you are in the "Message Filters" page you need to make sure that you have this problem VM email account selected in the "Filters for" section at the top of that screen. You might like to just check that again - apologies for missing that earlier.

Coenoby

[BillD1]

Hi

Thanks again

There is only the Virgin account.  Thunderbird is set to leave messages on the server until I delete them.

I will perservere with using MailWasher and webmail

Thanks

Bill

[Graham_A]

It's worth noting that Virgin Media Mail ignores any email client instructions to leave a message on the server until you send a delete instruction.  Also that setting usually only applies to email accounts connected using the POP3 protocol rather than IMAP.

That is precisely why I stopped using Mailwasher when VM Mail moved away from the international email standards.