POP3 mail client redownloading old emails from plusnet mail servers

[#1]

My email client, kmail on kubuntu 20.04, has suddenly started downloading old emails from the plusnet email accounts I have set up.

The same thing appears to be happening for the client k-9 mail for android on my phone.

Anyone experienced this before?

Regards,

Alistair

[#2]

Yes. I'm experiencing something similar. Between around 14:00 and 14:15 today, the mailboxes on both my laptop and iPad received 59 old email items dated between 23 and 30 May three times! When I logged on to Plusnet Webmail, my inbox only contained those same 59 email items. Everthing dated prior to tat have disappeared! I've since received one further (new) email which has only arrived once - at the time of writing!

I have raised a query on the Plusnet Twitter Help Page but haven't had a response yet.

[#3]

Alan,

Thanks, please update here when you get a response.

Regards,

Alistair

[#4]

My email accounts have just started doing this too. It *seems* like it may just be downloading messages that I had deleted from my inboxes but too soon to say as it's in the process of downloading several hundred messages 😞 And I also had connection errors on 2 accounts though 1 seems ok again now as it has already got a couple of hundred 'new' old messages.

I wonder if this is something to do with the changes being made to the email system as each of my accounts has received an email saying I might need to change my outgoing server settings (which I don't). It would have been good to get some warning or a heads up...

[#5]

I'm glad I'm not alone. I suspect they've reset the mail database and the sequence IDs have changed, so POP3 thinks that everything sitting on the server is new mail.

Best thing is probably to let them all download and then just delete the unread items.

[#6]

My Thunderbird email client is currently trying to download over 500! old emails. I've spoken to tech support. They know there's a problem but don't know what to do about it. Meanwhile, I haven't a clue how to clear this mess up at my end. I can't delete all unread emails because amongst the >500 are some new ones.  I'm furious.

[#7]

Clearly, it seems to be a fairly widespread.issue. I hadn't been notified of any upcoming changes to the email system or warned that I might need to change my settings. Has anyone else had (older) items deleted from their Webmail inbox? Mine is currently displaying none dated bfore 23 May 2022!

[#8]

Yep, that's my plan. At least I know anything older than yesterday has been dealt with so easy to sort by date and then mass delete. Or move to a temporary folder and sort it all out later.

Oh joy, my final account has now reconnected and there are now up to >1500 emails being downloaded

[#9]

yep, no notification about any upcoming changes but then - in my experience - there never is, or it's irrelevant & incomplete like today's outgoing mail server one which doesn't say when the change is happening. The Service Status page is useless.

I've checked webmail for one of my accounts and older messages are still there so whatever the issue is may be still working its way through the system?

From what I can see (so far) it does look like it's any email that is still on the server but not in my local inbox (e.g. because deleted or moved to another folder) that is being downloaded again. So for me it doesn't appear anything has been lost... fingers crossed...just a pain waiting for everything to download so I can get new emails.

I suspect I'll leave the tidying up exercise for another day in case this takes time to get sorted.

[#10]

Yes. I'm also going to stand back and wait and see what happens. For what it's worth, I've Tweeted Plusnet and asked them to come to this Forum topic.

I remain concerned about the disappearance of all emails dated prior ro 23 May 22 from my webmail inbox, although I may have some of them in my Outlook inbox. It's making the time to reconcile things that's annoying!

[#11]

Same thing happening here. Hundreds of emails from the last 2-3 weeks (which I know I've deleted because many are spam) are pouring in to my inbox. It's going to take me a lot of time to sift through them, because there are genuine messages among them and I'll have to check each one to see if I've filed/dealt with it.

We should all get a discount to compensate us for the time it's going to take us to sort out PlusNet's mistake.

[#12]

thanks. It will be interesting to see what they say. I'm off for a teabreak while 1507 messages download...

[#13]

Currently downloading 1035 messages on 2 devices, again, after having already marked all as read then deleted. Some of the emails go back to early 2020......Whatever has happened I hope Plusnet get it fixed asap!

[#14]

I suggest not deleting or moving any messages from your inbox(es) until the situation has stabilised, just in case they download yet again depending on what's going on at the server end ... Reading/replying or marking as read will probably be OK, I think (but no guarantee!).

[#15]

We are also seeing Outlook via POP3 re-downloading 1000+ emails.

Clearly this is a fault or a change that has gone very badly wrong.
Can we have an explanation please and ETA to a fix.