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Random Emails Gone from Gmail

9 points by jtnag ↗ HN
One of my workflow within gmail is to use it as searchable history of conversations/receipts/confirmations emails.

While I was printing out all the confirmation for upcoming holiday, I needed to get the confirmation of car rental.

Searched in gmail search - no email confirmation returned, seemed strange as I remember that I check it in December. Checked credit card history - it was payed although payment details did not had rental company name nor reservation confirmation id. - searched gmail mails around payment time - no match. - searched browser history - found links to gmail url with confirmation id around December, gmail url does not opens the email but inbox.

With confirmation id, I went through one-by-one on rental company to finally get the voucher by confirmation id and email.

This is the second time where email was simply gone from gmail - is it me (I'm loosing the trust for myself) or more then gmail issue?

7 comments

[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 53.7 ms ] thread
aurizon
It was there, but the classic . search did not find it - you found it as a response to the original booking. Hard to say if google is easing their cross-indexing?? or what? I wonder if the paid gmail has that same problem, or does the fee cover the extra detail work? I wonder if yahoo etc do the same? Or was this a one time flaw?
jtnag
Email was not there at all - not in searched results nor in mailbox history. Only reference was seen in firefox browser history where url to maiblox is kept + tab description (fortunately it included reservation id). Url did not resolved into showing email content.
aurizon
Well, I download all my gmails every year as an searchable archive. I joined in Oct 2006 = 600,000+ mails in it now.
jaggs
Yep, I've definitely had the same weirdness in the past. Messages completely gone or hidden. I've noticed that I also get the odd email from a stranger's account every so often. Which is really worrying.
ipython
I think often about this sort of “digital rot”. It’s got to be more common than we anticipate.
hiidrew
I've noticed gmail search is poor, especially if you're trying to recover something accidentally deleted
smittywerben
If you somehow find how to contact Google Support, I'd pass along the url with the ID. Maybe you have a rogue SMTP client putting the message into an unlabeled folder. Or your account is cursed, I like some of my gmail accounts more than others. It's hard to say. Sorry about that though. I've looked into recording all of my HTTP/HTTPS (decrypted) packets because losing important documents like this drives me crazy.