email lost from trash

Try running a date range search for some of the missing emails.  Like 01/01/2019-01/01/2020 in the Trash folder.

Thanks for the tip! But nothing. Do you think Comcast can or will retrieve them from their server? Is there a phone number to ask?

If you just deleted them accidentally they should be in the Trash folder, but you can call Comcast security and see if they can find and recover them-------------

Comcast Customer Security Assurance-------------------

Normal business hours (6:00 am to 2:00 am EST, 7 days a week)

1 - 888-565-4329

Thanks! You would think I could just move them from the trash folder back to the inbox folder, but no.  Apparently Comcast has programmed a maximum number that can be there and the rest get automatically deleted. Or they have a glitch in the programming.

The trash folder holds 5,000 messages.  If you delete more than 5,000 the remaining will be deleted, bypassing the trash folder.   

That being said, there is a temporary emergency backup of these messages. You can restore these by following the directions outlined in this help article https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/recover-deleted-email. 

It seems that the limit in trash is 15000, and in "Recover deleted email" is 5000.

Past that, they are gone.

This seems to be a Comcast bug that they are not interested in even talking about. 

I tried calling up, and as close as I could get to the people who actually do e-mail.

Over the last years of political campaigns, I managed to get on both Democrat and Republican mailing lists, so way too many emails.

The limit is supposed to be 10GB, which for usual size mail is a lot more than 20,000.

I didn't intentionally put them in the trash, either.  That seems to be another Comcast bug.

I did not intentionally put the emails in the trash; Comcast did that for me. It shouldn't be up to Comcast to decide what gets deleted. That's my decision. Comcast had an obligation to inform me when they change their mailbox organization so if this happens, it shouldn't be a surprise to me.

The limit seemed to be less than 5000. I didn't even retrieve that many when I used the recovery system. I also called Comcast and they were able to install a recovery folder in my mailbox, but even that only retreived 6 months worth. All the emails that were 1, 5, more years old are permanently gone.

Again, it is not Comcast right to delete my emails so easily.

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@gah5 wrote:

It seems that the limit in trash is 15000, and in "Recover deleted email" is 5000.

 

Past that, they are gone.

 

This seems to be a Comcast bug that they are not interested in even talking about. 

I tried calling up, and as close as I could get to the people who actually do e-mail.

 

Over the last years of political campaigns, I managed to get on both Democrat and Republican mailing lists, so way too many emails.

 

The limit is supposed to be 10GB, which for usual size mail is a lot more than 20,000.

 

I didn't intentionally put them in the trash, either.  That seems to be another Comcast bug.

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To clarify--------------

Spam is stored for 7 days or 2,000 messages, whichever comes first
Trash is stored for 14 days or 5,000 messages, whichever comes first

Those are the default settings and cannot be changed by you.  Also, the Spam and Trash folders do not count against your 10 Gb limit.  There is no numerical limit for any other folders.  The recovery folder, aka the "dumpster", is based on how long an email has been in it, and not how many there are.  If you do nothing else, when you delete an email it stays in the Trash folder for 14 days, then drops into the dumpster.  It should remain there for 30 days and will then drop out permanently.  At that point, it can no longer be recovered.

Just to clarify, below are the authoritative numbers directly from the mail system: 

These DO count against quota: 

Junk/Spam: 5,000 message limit and auto cleaned after 7 days ( The message limit currently varies to account for some changes in features/functionality from apple clients) 

Trash:  5,000 limit and auto cleaned after 14 days 

Does not count against quota: 

Recover deleted Messages (Dumpster) - 15,000 message limit and auto cleaned after 30 days. 

NOTE: Comcast does not automatically move/delete any mail outside of these folders. 

- Mail clients, backup applications, etc are typically responsible for moves after the mail is delivered.  

- Mail filtering rules within webmail or clients will be followed on delivery and not moved after. 

- Subfolders created by other clients with similar functionality such as "Spam Mail", "Junk Mail", etc are typically managed by the client that created them and not Comcast.  

It does not stay in the dumpster for 30 days. Even Comcast couldn't recover the emails that had only been deleted a few days before.

Point is people should be made aware that when you delete a block of mail now, the whole folder gets selected, not just the block you're viewing. In addition, you no longer get the message "Are you sure...?". Last, you should know that if it is more than 5000, you can't retrieve it and neither can Comcast's employees.

Comcast needed to inform their customers or not program in those limitations.

That might be the "official" word, but I stand by what I wrote regarding how it happened, and that I called Comcast within 10 days and they were not able to retrieve 15,000, or anywhere near that number, from the "dumpster".

This happened while I was deleting some mail from the trash.

Enough messages that it took some time.

What I have seen before, mostly when reading mail, is that the browser will be slow, and then send mouse clicks that didn't match what was under the mouse when I clicked it.  So I click on a message, the screen scrolls, and I get a different one.

So, even though I didn't click on "move all messages to trash", it is possible that the browser sent that.

If there is a limit to the size of trash, it should either verify that one really means it, or not put them all in the trash.   The whole idea of trash is to give us an extra chance before they are gone.  In the rare chance that someone really does want to trash the whole inbox, a warning would be nice.

Over recent years of political campaigns, I have gotten many emails related to such fund raising (from both sides!).  So my inbox had many messages that I wasn't interested in, but some that I was.

I thought that there should at least be disk backups that could restore, but from what I was told, there are none.  Is there no recovery in the case of server or disk failure?

thanks.

There is a menu option for inbox: "Delete all messages".

I have had cases where the mouse is slow, and what I click on is not what actually happens, so it isn't all that hard to click on "Delete all messages" when you meant something else.

That would not be so bad, if we could get the messages back from the trash, but it seems that we can't.  10GB of mail could easily be hundreds of thousands, or even millions of messages.

That Comcast deletes the mail without putting it in the trash, and without warning, is a bug.

There should be back-up tapes, at least in case of server failure, but so far everyone I ask denies this.

That is, maybe once a year or so, full backup of the servers.  Since what we are talking about is years of email, that could be useful.

thanks!

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@gah5 wrote:

There is a menu option for inbox: "Delete all messages".

 

I have had cases where the mouse is slow, and what I click on is not what actually happens, so it isn't all that hard to click on "Delete all messages" when you meant something else.

 

That would not be so bad, if we could get the messages back from the trash, but it seems that we can't.  10GB of mail could easily be hundreds of thousands, or even millions of messages.

 

That Comcast deletes the mail without putting it in the trash, and without warning, is a bug.

 

There should be back-up tapes, at least in case of server failure, but so far everyone I ask denies this.

That is, maybe once a year or so, full backup of the servers.  Since what we are talking about is years of email, that could be useful.

 

thanks!

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Just to clarify, if you click on "Delete all messages" in the folder context menu, you should see this-------------

OK, here is more exactly what happens.

I put maybe a few hundred email in the trash.  I did this by sorting on sender, then selecting ones from the same sender that I didn't need, and move them to trash.

Now I say empty trash.   And nothing happens.  Maybe I did it wrong, so try again.  And again.

I had over 9GB of mail, which was the reason for doing this, and was getting ready to try a program that could copy between Imap systems.  That is, copy all my mail to another computer.

It is now obvious that it takes some time, maybe a minute or so, to empty trash.  During this time, the browser doesn't respond, as it is waiting for Comcast, but still keeps track of mouse clicks.  (That might count as a browser bug.) 

So, since I was clicking on things while it wasn't responding, is it possible that I clicked "Delete all mail", and then "Confirm"?  I can't be sure that I wasn't.

Until this time, I was never told about the limit to the size of Trash, and for that matter, not about the recover of deleted mail or its size.  It was pretty obvious when I saw the size of exactly 5000 and 15000 messages, though, that someone was counting them. 

As "Delete" normally means "Move to trash", we should get an extra warning when it is more messages than fit in trash, that they will be deleted.