Forum Discussion

Gerry's avatar
Gerry
New Contributor III
2 years ago

Missing inbox emails

Most of the read emails in my inbox have vanished today. There were about 50 emails in my inbox this morning, but now only 5 are displayed, recently received. I am in the Santa Barbara CA area. The contents of my other folders seem to be intact. 

  • Gerry's avatar
    Gerry
    New Contributor III

    Thanks everyone for your comments. It is pretty obvious that Cox would llike to get rid of Webmail (out-sourcing in the last 5 years, no new Webmail accounts, very slow response in the last couple of months). And poor spam filtering, especially with phishing attempts. Forwarding these attempts does not seem to result in any improvement. I have defined any msg with "Cox" as spam.

  • Hi Gerry, 

     

    I am sorry you're having issues with your email. Are you accessing from our website or an email client? For additional assistance, feel free to send us an email to Cox.Help@Cox.Com with your full name, address and link to this forum. 

    • Gerry's avatar
      Gerry
      New Contributor III

      Directly from your website using a Windows browser.

      • ChrisJ2's avatar
        ChrisJ2
        Moderator

        Thank you, Gerry. If you've lost emails in Webmail all at once, it may be that an email client removed them from the server using IMAP or POP protocol. Did you delete the mails on your cellphone, or do you perhaps have an older PC that hasn't been booted up in awhile that may have been used? Please email us the physical address and any other pertinent information to Cox.Help@cox.com with your name and a copy of this forum message. We really want to help.

  • This has happened way too many times on this forum alone. Always the same answer after much investigating. "We can't retreive any old messages for you".

    https://forums.cox.com/discussions/internet/beware-%F0%9F%98%A5---webmail-deleted-my-inbox/147691

    Tom

      • CurtB's avatar
        CurtB
        Valued Contributor III

        "Unread Message Retention in Spam Folder" in the feature list is 30 days. 

        "Message Retention in Spam Folder" in footnotes is 21 days.

        According to the footnotes, messages in Spam folder are subject to deletion after 21 days, whether they're read or not.  That's inconsistent with 30 days indicated in the features list.

  • bryaninphx's avatar
    bryaninphx
    Valued Contributor

    This happened to a family member this morning. 
    His entire Inbox is EMPTY...
    We sent an email to Cox.Help@Cox.Com as they ask. No one has contacted us,
    Of course not, nobody here really gives a SH$T
    I contacted Julian, But if you Forum Folks really do care look into the issue.
    There has to be a Backup Server. It would be so irresponsible if there wasn't one....
    I've worked in IT most my life, NEVER has a organization NOT had a BackUp Server.

    • CurtB's avatar
      CurtB
      Valued Contributor III

      That could be a tough thing for your family member to have to deal with.  Hopefully Cox will restore their email, but I've never heard of them doing that for anyone.  If they do it for you, you may have to sign an NDA.  ðŸ˜©

      I read a lot of information from Cox websites and today was the first time I became aware that Cox had an expiration period on messages in any folder other than Trash and Spam.  This documentation says that unread email in Inbox will be deleted after 60 days.  Had none of the lost email in Inbox been read?  As long as a person doesn't exceed their Webmail storage limit, this policy only seems to benefit Cox by reducing storage space used by customer email.

      You may not be able to recover lost email, but you can prevent it from happening again.  The documentation says: A message may be retained by downloading it via a POP-3 client (such as Outlook Express), moving it to an alternative folder in WebMail, or by marking it as "Read."

      1. Create a personal Webmail folder, e.g. MyInbox.
      2. Create a Filter Rule with Action: File into and Select folder MyInbox

      This will copy all incoming messages to MyInbox that are going to Inbox.  This will create two copies of incoming email, but it will prevent unread email in Inbox from being deleted again.  

      • bryaninphx's avatar
        bryaninphx
        Valued Contributor

        All the email has been Read.

        All the email from the last 24 hours is gone also.

        I download all my emails into Outlook. I do it for him when I think about it. But the last time I did was October 4th. So we do have everything earlier than 10/04/23. I've tried to get him to use Outlook but he only uses webmail. Maybe now he's learned his lesson 😭

  • CurtB's avatar
    CurtB
    Valued Contributor III

    If you rely on Cox Webmail for critical email messages, create a gmail account and forward all incoming Webmail to the gmail account.  Select "Keep a copy of the mesage" so that Webmail won't be affected.  The gmail account will serve as an offsite backup for all your incoming email.  You'll only need to access gmail occasionally to keep it active.

    • Tom2001's avatar
      Tom2001
      Contributor

      Lost my INBOX a few months ago also. 

      In addition to forwarding all incoming messages to your gmail backup account, set up an automatic CC to that gmail account so that any new messages you create or respond to will also go to the gmail backup.

      NEVER again with webmail leaving me high and dry with no recourse.

      • CurtB's avatar
        CurtB
        Valued Contributor III

        Tom2001 

        Automatic BCC is a good idea.  That would allow all incoming and outgoing Webmail to be backed up to a gmail account.

        Settings > All settings > Inbox > Scroll down to: Advanced settings> Enter the gmail address in box below:  Always add the following recipient to blind carbon copy  (BCC) 

        If someone wants to use the gmail account for more than just Webmail backup, they might want to create a "Cox" label and create a rule to route all email forwarded from Webmail to the gmail "Cox" label to separate them from other gmail.