Leave my Yahoo Mail Alone!
October 9, 2010 4:57 PM Subscribe
Why did Yahoo Mail occasionally lose all my emails? Am I correct to blame my ex?
When I was still married to my ex, all the emails that I was holding in my Yahoo Mail inbox would periodically disappear (never more than 50 emails.) At the time, my then husband and I shared the same email account. I would get mad at him and he would plead innocence, wanted to know why I always blamed him, it was probably my own fault because I was not as computer savvy as him, etc., etc. His viewing of porn on the internet was always an issue in our marriage so I guessed it was probably related to some porn he downloaded. Since he left and we divorced, I still use Yahoo Mail but got a new account and this has never happened again.
So was he doing something? What possible reason was there for him to delete every email in the inbox, in the trash, etc. If it makes a difference, I use Internet Explorer for browsing and he used Firefox or Opera. It doesn't really matter anymore but it is something I have always wondered about.
When I was still married to my ex, all the emails that I was holding in my Yahoo Mail inbox would periodically disappear (never more than 50 emails.) At the time, my then husband and I shared the same email account. I would get mad at him and he would plead innocence, wanted to know why I always blamed him, it was probably my own fault because I was not as computer savvy as him, etc., etc. His viewing of porn on the internet was always an issue in our marriage so I guessed it was probably related to some porn he downloaded. Since he left and we divorced, I still use Yahoo Mail but got a new account and this has never happened again.
So was he doing something? What possible reason was there for him to delete every email in the inbox, in the trash, etc. If it makes a difference, I use Internet Explorer for browsing and he used Firefox or Opera. It doesn't really matter anymore but it is something I have always wondered about.
The little information you've given us doesn't totally exclude him maliciously deleting your mail, especially if you left yourself logged in anywhere he had access to. The thing is, this goes for everyone. If you left yourself logged in at work or the library or a cafe, someone may have just wiped it all as a dick move. The porn's a red herring, however.
Was your Yahoo account linked up to anything else? Did you ever create an account in a mail program (e.g. Outlook) or a smartphone? Certain programs will download the mail to the hard drive and wipe it from the server to save space.
Otherwise, a quick Google search shows that other people seem to have this problem as well. If you're really concerned you can contact Yahoo's mail recovery service.
posted by griphus at 5:11 PM on October 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
Was your Yahoo account linked up to anything else? Did you ever create an account in a mail program (e.g. Outlook) or a smartphone? Certain programs will download the mail to the hard drive and wipe it from the server to save space.
Otherwise, a quick Google search shows that other people seem to have this problem as well. If you're really concerned you can contact Yahoo's mail recovery service.
posted by griphus at 5:11 PM on October 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
Wait, just re-read your question. You shared the account? Yeah, what nasreddin said is probably accurate. He probably and had his client delete the mail from the server, although I can't say anything about his intent. That option tends to be on by default.
posted by griphus at 5:14 PM on October 9, 2010
posted by griphus at 5:14 PM on October 9, 2010
Not porn related. 3rding the idea that is was a default mail client setting. For future reference, if you share an email account with somebody, you can expect this sort of thing to happen. Get your own account if you want to have total control over the contents of your inbox.
posted by cosmicbandito at 7:03 PM on October 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by cosmicbandito at 7:03 PM on October 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
This happened twice to a friend of mine and he moved to another service after the second time. I think it might have been due to the memory limit being exceeded.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 8:45 PM on October 9, 2010
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 8:45 PM on October 9, 2010
It is possible that your ex was using a third party client to download mail from the server, but technically, that's a paid service for Yahoo Mail, they don't offer it for free like Gmail. There are ways around it, but typically you have to subscribe to Yahoo! Mail Plus to get that feature.
posted by katyggls at 6:10 AM on October 10, 2010
posted by katyggls at 6:10 AM on October 10, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks, everyone, for your input. Lesson learned. No more sharing of email accounts!
posted by eleslie at 2:09 PM on October 10, 2010
posted by eleslie at 2:09 PM on October 10, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by nasreddin at 5:03 PM on October 9, 2010 [4 favorites]