Historical emails have vanished

[GJW68]

Hi,

I was asked to log onto an email account (@btinternet.com), for a friend on the 24th of October as all the emails saved in her Inbox from the previous days, months and years had disappeared. The computer is setup as IMAP, the emails are not available through the Web portal, are not in the trash or bin folders or any sub folders. It is impossible for her technically to have deleted all of the emails and then also removed them from the trash. There are emails in other folders that pre-date the 24th October - all of her sent messages are intact for example.

The machine is an Apple Mac and is virus and malware protected.

The elderly friend is very ill and the Inbox was her only record of Doctor's correspondence relating to her health issues.

Has anyone ever had any luck asking BT's email support to retrieve emails?

[gg30340]

If the emails are not showing on webmail, when you log on using a browser, it means that they have been deleted from the BT servers and generally can not be recovered.

Invariably the only thing that BT can apparently do is to give the user information as to which device triggered the deletion.

I have notified the moderators of the forum about your problem. Once they have read this they may be able to help however it may be the case that they can not deal directly with you until they have received permission from the account holder. They will advise you by posting on this thread.

[DavidM]

Hi @GJW68 and welcome to our community.

I'm sorry your friend has lost the email. Can you ask her to check all devices and webmail for the emails? 

Cheers

David

[GJW68]

Hi,

She has an iPhone and of course they are not there either.

If you consider the stages she would have to go through to delete them from the Inbox and then Trash or Bin, I doubt it was her. She can barely type on the phone and doesn’t fiddle on the Mac.

[GJW68]

Hi,

Gone, from her two devices - Mac and iPhone.

Regards

Geraint