Suddenly lost emails from my inbox

[avalon60]

Last night  when checking my emails, they suddenly disappeared from my inbox. I tried to check VM email server for my account, but forgot my password, and when I clicked the said link for that, I have not got any reset password emails from virgin.

This morning I was getting new  emails, but now they have disappeared.

I am using a desktop computer with Thunderbird, and needless to say, this has never happened before.

How can I check my emails on the server if I can't log in.

[用心棒]

In Thunderbird select ☰ > Preferences > Privacy and Security > Saved Password… > Show Passwords and copy password for account.

Go to https://mail2.virginmedia.com , enter email address, password, and, if presented, complete ReCaptcha challenge to access email account via webmail

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[avalon60]

Thanks, I found the password now. I don't know why I didn't look there before, Doh!

Anyway after checking on VM email server, all the emails, which were showing in TB 2 days, ago have gone.

How did that happen!

[Matthew_ML]

Hey avalon60, thank you for your post and reaching out today. I am sorry to see your emails have sudden disappeared. 

I am happy to see you found your password from the help of our amazing VIP @用心棒.

Can I just check you have recently not closed the your Virgin Media account down its still an active email?

Have you also looke bin trash or archive folder?

Have you also checked the size of the email folder sometimes what happens is if they can full the mailbox starts to delete old emails to make room for new. Thanks

[avalon60]

No, I've not closed my VM account, and yes it is still active for emails.

As I said above the inbox emails disappeared the other day, then a few more arrived. The following day, they disappeared as well.

All the emails are still there in trash and sent and deleted,,but no recent ones.

Can I ask  why the emails would be deleted to make room for  new ones without informing me or anyone else it happens to.

Thanks

[coenoby]

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@avalon60 wrote:

Can I ask  why the emails would be deleted to make room for  new ones without informing me or anyone else it happens to.

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I will say up front that I am not a Virgin Media employee but I was surprised to read the comment from the Forum Team about emails being deleted because the Mailbox is full.

My understanding is that if a VM mailbox is full VM will bounce any further incoming emails back to the sender with the notification that the email cannot be delivered because the recipient's mailbox is full. I have never seen where VM arbitrarily delete emails just to free up space.

Going back to your original issue of the disappearing emails:

1) The archive function in Thunderbird often catches people. If you select an email or a block of emails in T'bird and accidentally  press the "A" key. the emails will instantly disappear.  That's because T'bird has archived them to the relevant archive folder.

2) There are many posts on the thunderbird Forum about disappearing emails - you might like to take a look there https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird 

Coenoby

[avalon60]

Thanks but the links to disappearing emails don't help me.

There was about 120 emails in my inbox, and almost all of them disappeared whilst I was looking through them.

I have not deleted nor moved any of them to anywhere else. The point I made above was that they are not even showing on VM's email server for my account. So in my view they disappeared from VM's email server and consequently my inbox

[Natalie_L]

Hi avalon60,

Thank you for getting back in touch with us. 

I am afraid that if the deleted emails are not showing within your trash folder, we would be unable to retrieve them.

Can you please visit the settings and filters within your account and ensure that they are set up correctly? More information on this can be found here

Are you also accessing your account via webmail? If so, please select the sort filter and check if you have conversations ticked. If yes, please untick this and let us know if the emails show. 

It would also be worth running some checks on the hardware to ensure there is no potential threats so we would recommend following the steps here to ensure your account is protected. 

Please let us know how you get on. 

Thanks 

[avalon60]

Hi Natalie.

the email server settings is set to IMAP Mail Server on Port 993.

Yes I can access my account via webmail, but only to check the missing emails , as I said above.

There are no conversations ticked , and  I'm not sure what filters you are referring to.

Thanks

[用心棒]

The webmail filters being referred to can be found under ☰ > Settings > ▸ Email > Filter Rules; should you find any unexpected rules it is important that you follow the advice here, My Virgin media email has been hacked | Virgin Media Help

BTW if Thunderbird is setup to access the email account via IMAP then there is no merit to using webmail; webmail is an IMAP client as it Thunderbird but the latter has richer feature set. In Thunderbird try:

• select email account folder
• right click on folder and from the pop-up menu select Subscribe…
• make sure all folders are selected (✓) and select OK
• press Ctrl + Shift + F and in Search Message window enter criteria to locate messages by Date
  NB if missing emails are not returned in results then they are unrecoverable