lost emails

[robinh]

i recently discovered that approx 3 years of emails have gone missing from my btinternet email account. They are not on the server and I haven't changed any settings or moved anything. I called the BT Premium email help line and they told me it was a Yahoo problem so I registered it with Yahoo Customer Care and received an email back from them saying they were dealing with it. I registered the problem with them within 7 days of the outtage. Since then I have heard nothing back from Yahoo. I called Yahoo and they said it was a BT problem. I have called BT repeatedly and been told a different story each time: nothing can be done, we are working on it, call Yahoo, it is all OK and someone will call you back after having chased up Yahoo. Then finally today they said nothing can be done - the emails are lost.

HELP! Any suggestions/advice much appreciated...

[gg30340]

If Yahoo say they are lost there is nothing anybody on this forum will be able to do to recover them.

Not much help now but you should install and use an email client where you can download your remaining emails onto your device and include them in your backup regime, assuming you have one and if not you should seriously consider it and not rely on anything being safe that is stored on the cloud. 

[robinh]

Thanks for your reply. Actually Yahoo only told me to talk to BT. It was BT who said that they liaised with Yahoo and that nothing could be done. But I am suspicious of this reply because I got a different story from BT each time I called and they just sounded like they couldn't be bothered. They would not even tell me if this was a common problem or if it had happened before. It was just a brush off/ "go away" answer. So I wonder if there is anything that can be done. Seems odd that BT/Yahoo don't keep back ups. Why would all those thousands of emails just disappear??

[gg30340]

See link regarding lost/deleted emails. 

https://www.bt.com/help/email/bt-email--some-of-my-emails-are-missing--can-i-recover-them-

The time period for attempted recovery of BTYahoo emails is 7 days so I suspect you will be outside that period now.

I dare say that Yahoo do keep some sort of back up of their email system but I have no idea how it is stored or for how long or how easy it is to recover an individuals emails from it and by the sound of it given that they have said there is only a seven day window of opportunity I doubt they will even try. 

As regards why they went missing in the first place it could have been a server fault but only Yahoo would be able to say for sure and again I doubt if they would tell you.

[robinh]

OK thanks. Have you heard of this happening before? Pretty worrying if it a common occurrence...

[gg30340]

I would not say it is unheard of but it is not a common occurrence.

I will ask the moderators if there is anything that they can do but I would not hold out much hope that the emails can be recovered.

[robinh]

OK Thanks

[RobbieMac]

Hi @robinh,

Welcome to the Community and thanks for posting.

I'm sorry to see that those emails are missing.  As the guys on here have pointed out, the time period for recovery of any missing emails is seven days.  We would be unable to restore any missing emails from before and the restore request isn't guaranteed I'm afraid.  If you'd like to try, you can use the following link and your request will go to Yahoo directly:  Recover lost or deleted emails

Cheers,

Robbie

[andrewmcneill]

I discovered the same problem 2 days ago, it's not the first time I've had this either, it happened several years ago as well.  I reported it to Yahoo via their recovery service, but nothing happened.  Replied to the automated email sent, no response.  Very disappointed in the Yahoo service, they just don't seem to care.  And there's no easy way to contact BT either since I don't consider this a priority over Covid-19 issues others may have.

[Matt-S]

Hi @andrewmcneill,

Welcome to the Community and thanks for taking the time to post.

I'm sorry to hear that you have lost your email and that the recovery tool has not helped restore the emails.

Can you give us a call on 0800 800 151 as soon as possible to report the issue and have a ticket raise?

Thanks

Matt