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iPhone X Deleted 100s of Thousands of Emails without Permission (No Recovery Available)

N

NickMcCandless

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 14, 2013
134
12
Absolutely panicking and freaking out right now. My iPhone X deleted 100s of thousands of emails from my accounts and they cannot be restored. I set it up from an iCloud Backup and it did NOT retain my email settings like it should so it was set to delete Trash emails after a week even though on my previous iPhone it was set to Never, so now my new iPhone X did this without my permission or me wanting to do this and it has deleted 100s of thousands of emails I desperately need for reference and legal matters. Any suggestions or what I can do?

These email accounts were IMAP accounts and my email host did not keep backups. I keep backups but the backup runs each day and only retains the past two backups and I got this iPhone X last week. I didn't notice these settings until today when I went to go look for emails in my trash. PLEASE HELP!
 
Marshall73 said:
If you have a Mac with a time machine backup you can recover them via that.
Click to expand...
The email accounts are IMAP so it syncs with the actual server, doesn't actually keep it on my computer correct? Plus I do not do time machine backups, I just have all of my important folders on iCloud Drive so I dont have to worry about backing up.
 
Might try contacting your email provider and asking if they retain deleted emails for any period of time? I'd act fast though because even the best companies tend to only keep backups around for a limited time.
 
Newtons Apple said:
I always do both iTunes and Cloud backups. Never lost any emails.
Click to expand...
Were your email accounts IMAP? If your email accounts were IMAP, how would those backups back up your emails?
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camhabib said:
Might try contacting your email provider and asking if they retain deleted emails for any period of time? I'd act fast though because even the best companies tend to only keep backups around for a limited time.
Click to expand...
I tried, they have no backups other than the two I have from the past two days which don't do me any good as these backups were AFTER my iPhone automatically did the deleting.
 
Is it possible that you are just syncing recent mail, and not all of your previous mail on your iPhone?
 
IIRC the Mac Mail app caches imap emails locally, so they do get included in time machine backups. However, you really need to:
  • Stop keeping only 1 copy of business-critical documents, especially not in the Trash folder. I mean, seriously, what were you thinking?
  • Get a proper filing system, not just sticking everything in the Trash folder. See point 1...
  • Get a proper backup strategy in place. No, iCloud Drive is not a backup strategy: if you accidentally delete a file it’s gone unless you have another backup in place. For critical data you need 3 copies of any file, on at least 2 different physical drives, with one copy offsite.
 
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Ok I get it I messed up, but what can be done or checked at this point? I have learned my lesson and will properly back everything up once I get this taken care of which is urgent.
 
NickMcCandless said:
The email accounts are IMAP so it syncs with the actual server, doesn't actually keep it on my computer correct? Plus I do not do time machine backups, I just have all of my important folders on iCloud Drive so I dont have to worry about backing up.
Click to expand...

IMAP keeps a mirror copy on the Mac, which would have been dead handy if you had been using time machine. I have had to restore email this way before.

You also might want to move your email to office 365 for better resilience in future.
 
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NickMcCandless said:
Ok I get it I messed up, but what can be done or checked at this point? I have learned my lesson and will properly back everything up once I get this taken care of which is urgent.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately you're most likely screwed. Consider this a lesson learned. Using the trash folder for anything other than messages you don't care about is not very smart.
 
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NickMcCandless said:
Ok I get it I messed up, but what can be done or checked at this point? I have learned my lesson and will properly back everything up once I get this taken care of which is urgent.
Click to expand...
I honestly don’t think you can. If there’s nothing in your trash and you don’t have a local backup it’s all just gone. FWIW it works this way with desktop files too. Those are technically recoverable with specific software tools but everything you’ve lost is on a server somewhere. You won’t have access/permission to that hardware.
 
Depends on your email provider. Mine for example (FastMail) keeps backups of deleted email for one week.
 
Do you have another machine that is a) powered off or asleep and b) hasn’t yet connected to the network and c) was configured to fetch mail from your IMAP accounts?

If so, you might be able to grab the emails from the local cache (via whatever mail app you use). Just make sure to take it off he network ASAP.
 
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NickMcCandless said:
The email accounts are IMAP so it syncs with the actual server, doesn't actually keep it on my computer correct? Plus I do not do time machine backups, I just have all of my important folders on iCloud Drive so I dont have to worry about backing up.
Click to expand...

Typically IMAP syncs header information and only caches the full message when you read it, and of course that cache is not permanent. However some IMAP clients have offline mode that does sync full copies, but I would look to a desktop client to see if anything is recoverable there (disconnect from the Internet first).

As has been said, the Trash folder is an extremely risky place to leave messages you care about. I would contact your email provider to see what they can do for you. Good luck.

Sean
 
Unfortunately, your deleted trash emails are long gone since your hosting provider keeps so few backups on hand. I work in IT as well and we keep backups for 14 days for issues just like this.

Also, keeping important emails you need in the Trash folder was a big mistake on your part. You would have been better off just leaving those emails in your Inbox.
 
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