Hotmail inbox emptied - again

[Skyhooker]

For the second time in maybe three months, I logged into my Hotmail the other day to make sure there was nothing important in the junk mail (frankly, I mainly use it as a junk account). Not only was my junk folder empty, so was the inbox! Does anyone know what the heck is going on there? There was no message about the purge, nothing. I use Thunderbird as an email client, so I have every message backed up, but I'd still like to know why that happened.

Thanks,


Sky

 

[DarDar]

there is a time limit on how often you must login before it wipes the account info. Were your contacts gone also? its happened me once or twice

 

[Skyhooker]

I log in at least once a week to check the junk box. All contacts are still there, just no mail older than two days ago.

Weirdness...

 

[Vicenarian]

Maybe it bases account activity on sent emails? Or some other method.

Maybe they suspected you were using the account against their "terms of service" and emptied it?

Or maybe Microsoft is secretly spying on your emails, and found out you bought a Mac, and now are getting revenge!

 

[Skyhooker]

Maybe it bases account activity on sent emails? Or some other method.

Maybe they suspected you were using the account against their "terms of service" and emptied it?

Or maybe Microsoft is secretly spying on your emails, and found out you bought a Mac, and now are getting revenge!

I almost never send an email from it, and only get the usual junk and shopping receipt.

I can't imagine how I could have violated any terms of service.

My only Mac was a gift of an old eMac - hardly gonna break Microsoft...

I should add (just remembered) that Thunderbird also re-downloaded the entire inbox a day or so before this happened, so I had duplicates of everything - couldn't figure that out, either, and it wasn't the first time.

 

[Daifne]

Do you have Thunderbird set to "Leave messages on server"? It's under Tools>Account Settings>*each account*>Server Settings

 

[Galdorf]

I know they are making huge changes with hotmail maybe this is why:
use hotmail features without changing your email address

 

[Skyhooker]

Do you have Thunderbird set to "Leave messages on server"? It's under Tools>Account Settings>*each account*>Server Settings

Yep, it's set to leave on server "until I delete them." I'm not even sure Hotmail will delete them at all through Thunderbird, but I've never changed that setting since I set it up.

 

[Skyhooker]

I know they are making huge changes with hotmail maybe this is why:
use hotmail features without changing your email address

Hmmm, no time to read through and digest it all, but thanks for the link - you could be right.

 

[Skyhooker]

It just happened again this morning! I opened T-bird and it started downloading duplicates of all my Hotmail messages. I closed T-bird, followed the steps here to prevent them from being downloaded yet AGAIN, and then logged into the Hotmail webmail page to check the junk folder for any non-junk, only to be greeted with an empty Inbox. It's a good thing I download the entire messages in Thunderbird.

Weird thing is, following the steps on that page above caused Thunderbird to re-download all the message headers, or at least compare them to what it finds online (re-creating the deleted .msf files in the profile folder), so there must be a reference to the missing mail somewhere on the Hotmail servers, unless I'm misunderstanding what's going on - I'm no email expert. If so, why is my Inbox empty? Confused...

 

[TopLevelComp]

It could be Thunderbird causing the issues. Have you had this issue before without using Thunderbird?

 

[Paul Rodgers]

Thunderbird doesn't have the same quality and polish that Firefox does. If you can use Outlook.

For now try not using Thunderbird and check your email on hotmail.com. If you still have an issue you know it is hotmail related.

 

[Joseph@Dagon]

Mate you've been hacked or some sort of online organisation knows ur hotmail password.

I had this problem a couple years back when i used to play World of Warcraft (dont judge me lol). Anyways all WOW players once in their lifetime will buy gold from some chinese companies. Ever since the day i bought gold, this problem was happening to my hotmail inbox.

I would also get a huuuuge amount of spam too ever since the gold buying day.

I got in touch with hotmail and they recommended i change my password and secret question/answer. Ofcourse before doing this i thoroughly checked my pc for any keyloggers.

It helped. Havn't had an empty inbox since.

 

[Daifne]

Ah, you used my suggestions over there. ;-)

I agree that the account may have been hacked. A lot of that with Hotmail and Yahoo lately. They don't change your password, just use the account. Change your password.

Also, for the duplicate downloading, your popstate.dat file may be corrupted. Here's the info on that which I also regularly post on Mozillazine.

First, move all of the messages you want to save to another folder outside of your inbox. You shouldn't store them there anyway, but also that will make this process easier.

With Thunderbird closed, go into your profile. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder#Thunderbird
If you are using Windows, before you try to find your profile, you need to set "Windows to View hidden files and folders" and to not "Hide extensions for known file types". See this for easy instructions for how to do this: http://spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?t=272

Now, find the file popstate.dat which is in your Mail>*account* folder for this account and delete it. This file is Thunderbird's memory of what it has downloaded and I suspect that it is corrupted. When you reopen Thunderbird and get mail for this account it will download everything from the server one more time. Clean up by deleting all the repeated mail in your inbox. Compact your folders again (and at least weekly from now on). This should fix the problem.

 

[Skyhooker]

Ah, you used my suggestions over there. ;-)

I agree that the account may have been hacked. A lot of that with Hotmail and Yahoo lately. They don't change your password, just use the account. Change your password.

Thanks, Daifne - yes, I was in a hurry when I posted here, and was going to thank you for the instructions, so thanks!

As for the password, I had changed it when this first happened a few months ago to a random string of 16 or so characters, stored in my encrypted password locker, so I think it's unlikely that the PW was cracked. Also, I have no alternate email address listed in case of lost credentials. Very weird...

 

[Daifne]

You're very welcome, Skyhooker

Not impossible though. My closest friend, who's husband is also in IT and makes her use very strong passwords, was still recently hacked. In her case, they were sending spam to her address book via her account. The spammers seem to have found ways in. I see this as a definite failure on the part of Hotmail and Yahoo.