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SN1951bk's profile

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6 Messages

Wednesday, May 24th, 2023 6:07 PM

disappearing email

In an exchange of emails with a friend, one of her responses to me went into my Spam folder. This was one message out of a thread of messages back and forth. I found it and clicked Not Spam. 

The message in question then reappeared in its proper place within the thread. But when I responded and hit Send, her message that had been previously misidentified as Spam disappeared again from the thread. Attachments to one of my previous messages to her also disappeared.

I looked in my Spam folder and in my Trash folder. I did a search through all folders. It's nowhere to be found. Her disappeared message also had attachments that I would like to have.

Is there any way to recover it? It's scary that one message and those attachments can be just wiped out of a thread like that.

Community Support

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230.7K Messages

10 months ago

Happy to help you recover the missing emails, SN1951bk.

 

You can restore missing emails to your account by completing a restore request form.

 

Before you submit the form, keep in mind:

  • We can only restore emails from the past 7 days.
  • You can’t cancel a restore request.
  • Restoration efforts aren’t always successful.
  • Recovered emails go into the same folders they were in on the restore date you pick. Check your trash folder if you can’t find them after the restoration.
  • You should back up any important emails received or sent in the past 7 days. 

If you need help with anything else, let us know. Thanks for contacting AT&T.

 

Aminah, AT&T Community Specialist

New Member

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6 Messages

10 months ago

It kind of worked. The message reappeared in the thread. This time, I was cautious, so I copied out the text and downloaded the attachments. As I feared, the message disappeared again right after I did that.

What goes on with that? My spam filter is no (Edited per community guidelines) good—it often throws all kinds of important legitimate messages (from my wife, from my job) into Spam. These are people with whom I exchange messages many times every day, so there's no conceivable reason for them to be flagged as Spam. It looks as though it's just random. It lets lots of actual, obvious spam through.

But this is the first time I had this problem. Do I have to worry now, going forward, about messages from my wife and my job—that they'll disappear after I've tagged them as Not Spam and sent them to my Inbox? Will I have to always copy them out to preserve them? What kind of crazy, hostile person programmed it this way?

Bruce

(edited)

New Member

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6 Messages

10 months ago

Follow up:

The message has since reappeared including attachments, at least for now, in its proper place within the thread. It still carries a warning, though: "This email was moved from Spam folder. Attachments may contain harmful content." Apparently, the program is set to advise me that it doubts my judgment as to what is and isn't spam and let me know that it thinks it knows better.

I hope this message will not disappear again and that no such incident will occur in the future, especially with work emails and those from important people in my life, But as the program's warning tells me that it has little faith in me, so I have no faith whatsoever in it. It has amply demonstrated that it has no clue what is and isn't spam.

Bruce

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