MX Linux Forum

I know this is not an MX problem but i use MX and hope someone can help. Been using Gmail for 20+years.

Yesterday i tried to delete some of my old emails on the online gmail website. I've done something to stop gmail saving sent msgs. In the past i have set up an email client Evolution [using IMAP] to purge msgs over 2 years old. I couldn't remember where one sets that 'filter' up - but it's not a filter it is in Properties i found out later. [I know Thunderbird is the default email client with MX but i prefer Evolution as it downloads msgs when one does a new install very much faster than T'bird].

I did a search and found a help post to delete msgs in bulk but that didn't work. Now whether i use Evolution or Gmail GUI messages are not saved.

Did a google for help 'not saving sent msgs' and it came up with the following
Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as > click 'save sent messages in the sent items folder'
That doesn't seem to exist any longer. Gmail seems to save 'sent msgs' in the All mail with a label for Sent [so if you look in the Sent folder they will be seen there].

As this is not an MX problem, I have moved your topic to the chat section.

I have seen this behavior when a gmail account it hacked. Typically, there is a filter that is set ( little gear and settings, then filters when your using gmail via a web browser.) and go through those to verify that something is not set there.

If your using Evolution, then it is possible that a) you have a filter setup there, or b) you have a corrupted mail box. Not sure how you re-sync a box in evolution, but in thunderbird you go to the properties on that mail box and then choose Repair ( or on the Synchronization page, uncheck download now, then recheck it.)

Do you happen to have a two year old Timeshift snapshot laying around?

Maybe – Create a new gmail account and export it into that, possibly creating a Timeshift snapshot previous to that.
May not work if it's due to an email client - I don't know, others might.

Thx for your suggestions. I've been doing some further investigation. I can access the account through login. It does not save any msgs i send although it does send them - i have another gmail account so i could try that. I don't receive msgs... asked a friend to send me a couple of emails.

I've removed Evolution for now. Thing is i am in the middle of job hunting so anxious to get any emails. I did set up a filter incorrectly in Evolution which might be the problem but then deleted them and uninstalled Evolution. On the Gmail GUI which i've used today i still have the problem. So it cannot be a corrupted mail box.

I use IMAP and found that Thunderbird was slow when reading the msgs. Evolution far faster than any other client like Sylpheed or Claws so i started using it. I presume T'bird is slow as it was first written in the days of POP and probably is better for that. Perhaps i should try the newer T'bird.

What i have done is use Gmail's transfer and moved mail and contacts over to the other account. As for hacking i am careful and have different 20+ characters for passwords each different for any online site like ebay, paypal etc.

On another note i'd be interested to hear if anyone has had problems with IMAP?

IMAP is a better setup than POP as it syncs between PC, Phone etc but this has made me think maybe POP is a safer bet.

I use Thunderbird on a number of clients with gmail, as well as myself and the issues I have had have been pretty much google changing X or Y and not thunderbird. (In my opinion, imap IS better for most people for a few reasons - backup's being one of those. )

But, if your using a web browser, sending emails and NOT seeing them in Sent, then there is something wrong in your gmail settings and this is where you need to spend some time. ( especially in GMAIL filters because that is typically where it goes haywire.)

A few links to send emails, and others will probably be useless for you situation, but….

https://tempr.email/en/ SendReceive_UnknownPrivate
https://tempmail.ninja/ Tempmail.ninja send receive 48hrs
http://www.sendanonymousemail.net/
https://mailsac.com/ Receive test

These, I don't know enough to know how to use them properly, but maybe you do.
https://www.checktls.com/TestReceiver
https://www.autistici.org/docs/mail/privacymail#2.2 some instructions

MXtoolbox provides mass marketing/advertising.
https://mxtoolbox.com/
https://mxtoolbox.com/deliverability
https://mxtoolbox.com/NetworkTools.aspx Several email tools, click on email tab.
https://mailcoat.com/

More privacy related:
https://www.emailprivacytester.com/
https://devrolabs.com/products-landing- ... f=altmails
https://devrolabs.com/products devrolabs email test
https://ssl-tools.net/mailservers/gmail.com
https://ssl-tools.net/mailservers Europe
https://ssl-tools.net/providers

Misc:
https://dismail.de/serverlist.html

CharlesV wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 4:43 pm ...
But, if your using a web browser, sending emails and NOT seeing them in Sent, then there is something wrong in your gmail settings and this is where you need to spend some time. ( especially in GMAIL filters because that is typically where it goes haywire.)

I'm sure you are right. But i have checked the gmail settings and both accounts are the same. I wonder if i have found a bug. One thing i did accidentally was click Settings > General > Enable dynamic mail.

I will check the Gmail settings again but i can't see anything different between the accounts.

Thx for your help folks. I'll just have to use the other account. Now all mail has been transferred i will try some more testing. I've had these accounts for 20+ years and never had a problem.

If you have a windows pc you could try using the free program MailStore Home. It'll grab everything and archive it locally for you, assuming when you send something gmail actually shows it as sent. If you log out and then log back in and your sent messages are gone you need a different provider. Vfemail has a one time ~$25 fee for a lifetime subscription so imap clients are possible. ProtonMail has free accounts too. They are very polished but I tend to not want to pay them forever just to get the ability to use the extra features.

@davidy Have you ever used Vfemail email?
I had it bookmarked for the free service but somehow overlooked the $25 lifetime service.
At the time I was seeking ones with more aliases, but it seems OK.
EDIT - If you did, did you use Horde or Roundcube?
EDIT2 - Do you know the differences between Aliases and Identities, or uses of - "Identities"?
I know some providers have different definitions for Aliases, and I'm fairly knowledgeable regarding Aliases, but I'm new to Identities - just discovered in a Roundcube service.

I'm about to pull the trigger on vfe in a week or so. Aliases are just secondary addys that a single provider will give you so that you don't need like 5 different accounts to separate different types of email like work, home, bank, suzy etc. gives the ability to use one source/login to check multiple 'accts'. I've been using free so long, I payed for one out of poland recently but one day they stopped letting me login and I was only a month or so into the year plan ($20) and haven't payed anybody else ever. Aliases/identities can hide you but that's not specifically what I believe they are for. Just being able to access one account for multiple reasons and personas. How you use them is what may or not hide you. I will never expect any single service to handle all my email AND hide me. I can make 10 different free accts with proton in about ten minutes but don't want to be on a recurring $ hook for anything else they offer. Never heard of roundcube. Horde sounds familiar but never used it. I prefer to keep things as simple as possible and try to avoid one service I use that then requires a second layered service on top type stuff. Not my pc so if anything happens it's completely out of my control. PGP or spamfilters is about all I've ever used.
When and if I get it up and running I'll let you know what I think. I dumped gmail before they left beta. First couple smartphones I made accts but as soon as I rooted gmail/google went to the circle file again.

@davidy Thank you for replying!
As I've been searching through emails for months, obviously the top recommended ones are often proton, tutanota, and a few others, skiff a new one, (I opened an account, but only used a few times) looked a little promising but then they were bought out.

And the obvious, alias services, addy.io (which I use), simplelogin, but if you're looking for email services, I have a dozens of them bookmarked, some a little obscure. I was stiill using Yahoo, from my first computer chromebook days, maybe the worst email provider for privacy as they state that they read/scan your emails, but they may have been one of the only services that provided alias emails, up to 500 free alias emails, but you had to create before hand.

I have many forwarding, aliases (some different definitions), and one that is a combination (open-source) forwarding on the fly (yet changeable if someone figures out the base address and wants spam you on the fly (rare) that I believe was presumed to be deprecated, but I tried it, it's back in business.

I'd probably really like lockrmail, but I'm almost certain that I'd be the product.

I just got a new email account, but you may not like it, I may not like it, I haven't used it that much, it uses another service, roundcube, it's a little slow, maybe it's my internet speed, it's 10MB download, yes, that's not a typo. But, recall, I was looking for more aliases - Yahoo's 500 aliases were nice. This has 20 aliases, unlimited identities, IMAP, it says that it works best with local clients, such as Thunderbird, so that might be some of my speed issues. I thinks it's somewhat rare and esoteric, you need an invite, but you actually get a free invite after you pay $5 for the 15GB of storage in file sharing platform with e2e server encryption, ad free, and support for all types of files – haven't used that yet. It sounds good, but I may not like it. I wanted to let CharlesV know about this, but he's – as are most of you – probably fairly well set with his email provider.

Anyway, if you want a list of them, I can get one together, it may not be very organized, but I included some rough tags in the bookmark titles so that I usually know which ones are open-source, private, etc.

And I'm still curious about vfe.

And I didn't know that it was you initially, after you changed your avatar, but then I recognized the privacy concerns and comments – which I like.

Cheers!

I haven't read through the whole thread, but before you try all kinds of hoops, have you asked on the google help area?

Forget proton unless you get on their forever plans. They spam the free accounts to death with their own ads which is extremely annoying. "FREE as long as you let us piss up your leg". As soon as I get vfe up and running I'm dumping the free proton accts to be sure. Mailfence has junky spam filters but at least they don't nag you to death. I thought, sure, delete a few offers to upgrade but THEY NEVER END... I get more spam from them than actual mail. Retards

Eadwine Rose wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2024 2:25 am I haven't read through the whole thread, but before you try all kinds of hoops, have you asked on the google help area?

Yes i looked up a couple of posts one of which is below. There was another but i can't find it now. DO NOT DO THIS. I would be very wary of any help posts because in my view Gmail carry out constant innovation - which is good but you need to be sure that the post is from google. Which post was wrong i don't know and the damage has been done. Obviously somehow the mailbox was corrupted. I could send email [but would not save a copy] but not receive. Which whilst job hunting was a serious blow.

"How do I delete thousands of old emails in Gmail?
To quickly clean up thousands of emails in Gmail on the web:

1] Open your inbox and type 'older_than:x days' in the search bar (replace 'x' with the number of days).
2] Click the checkbox on the top-left to select all emails on the page.
3] Click the 'Trash' icon to delete emails that were selected.


We have a mailbox which has been receiving many different automated report emails a day for around 8 years, and currently has over 5 million emails in it which has exceeded our storage limit of 15gb (and therefore can no longer receive new emails). I can search for emails older than X (e.g. 24 months) but when I try to delete them all I get a message saying "Oops, something went wrong. Recent changes may not have been saved". I believe Google doesn't allow you to delete more than a certain number of emails at once, thus using the UI I would be forced to delete them in batches of 100 at a time which simply isn't feasible."

I've used gmail for about 20 years and always had that feeling that one day with their developments something would go wrong. Always found Gmail reliable and never a problem. Some of the features have irritated me - their online GUI changed to a 'pop up window' for replies which i really hated. I remember someone saying on a forum [my previous distro] that one was better to stick to an email client and then one can just forget about the 'fancy stuff in Gmail' you don't want. How right that person is!

When my mailbox got quite full i switched to an email client as they can filter through emails and delete over 2 or 3 years worth which is useful. That's the only filter i have ever used. But it's not actually a filter - one just sets it in properties [for Evolution highlight the account > Folder > Properties > Archieve > click auto-clean up messages set delete. Only ran it occasionally and when i set up MX i forgot how to do that. With a smartphone sometimes i did email on there and sometimes on the PC. IMAP has advantages it has to be said.

I opened another Gmail account and managed to extract all contacts and messages. I thought again about using Gmail and chose Yahoo. I had used Yahoo about 30 years ago now and joined the mail groups when yahoo was the main email provider. So spent a few days sorting out my contacts. Yesterday i found to my horror Yahoo does not speak to any microsoft mail address - hotmail, live, outlook. It transpired when i contacted a friend who uses 'live'. He received my emails but his bounced from my yahoo account. I recall now that MSN and Yahoo did this years ago and thought something would have been sorted out - but to my horror found this was it seems still the case. I can't think now why anyone should use Yahoo [or aol as they are now joined]. Yet both are still in the top 6 email providers. MSN is still widely used by many firms along with a related email.

So today i have been going through all my contacts again that i had set to Yahoo. You forget just how many you accrue over time and you DO NOT WANT to change email address. Best contacts addressbook i have found is the one on Gmail. It's my sort of diary - not just contacts but phone numbers and postcodes as i use a smartphone as satnav - all in just one place.

All i can say from the experience is avoid the 'fancy stuff in Gmail' - stay on an email client and you'll have no trouble. IF you do something by mistake in an email client you can always uninstall/install or reset BEFORE you've touched your messages. Hope no one has the experience i have had.

What i did to mess up my email i will never know. But as the person said 'fancy stuff in Gmail you don't want'

I totally recommend VFEmail. It works flawlessly and is very powerful, once you figure out how to filter spam that is. I tried changing me ebay email address to vfemail but Ebay refuses to recognize vfe as legit. HomeDepot has no issue.

Just a tad update. I now use vfemail with Evolution. Woks great btw and Evolution will happily save any single email to the mbox format locally as well as happily reopen it. Mbox being somewhat like a vcard but for singe email messages.