I currently have a problem issue (case) open with Suddenlink after getting onto my PC on Friday the 18th to check email. Actually I went to my Trash to find a recent email that included a discount code for a product. SO, I went to trash for account-1 and instantly watch all my emails there disappear before my eyes older than 5/14/18! Whoa! Deleted off my PC. I knew the particular email went to my other two accounts also, so I thought I'd just head over to account-2 to get it. Poof! Same thing happened on account 2 -- I watched them disappear too, again everything I had older than 5/14/18! Now I realized something is fishy. On the PC I use Thunderbird. Could it be a Thunderbird problem?
Next step to diagnose the issue was head to Suddenlink website and see what remained there. I signed on to account-1 and went to its trash. I should mention that I use the IMAP protocol for all my Suddenlink accounts for EMAIL from my PC and Kindle. As soon as I went to its Trash I got to see them disappear likewise. First-line support at Suddenlink was very nice and understanding and noticed the issue across my accounts, but couldn't explain the phenomenon, so we opened a case to go to more technical people to help understand/resolve. BUT the issue could take a few days -- that means a week or so or never given the prior experiences I have had with them.
I expect little at this point, so I pursued the issue myself and learned a lot about managing EMAIL via IMAP protocol In addition I exposed a few Privacy/Security issues with Suddenlink worth documenting here. First, let's just talk about IMAP versus POP protocols for EMAIL. I am relating this information from past technical expertise in diagnosing problems in general, NOT an expertise in either protocol, so bear with me if some facts are not entirely true,
IMAP as I now understand it allows you to manage your email from any device AND have it completely synchronize across all devices which use IMAP protocol. So, in my case, my email was across essentially only 3 devices thankfully: My PC where I manage all 3 Suddenlink accounts, plus two POP accounts with YAHOO, my Kindle where I also can manage all email similarly for all 5 accounts, and, of course, the two website facilities themselves that I can access my email online. What needs to be understood is that the websites first will keep all emails in the background somewhere for probably years for legal reasons. What they show you there is just the active ones in INBOX and the ones in TRASH, SENT, DRAFT, ARCHIVE folders that you set up to use. I have many, many more folders on my PC that are NOT also kept on the website and synchronized. Fortunately, I was smart enough to keep old emails I wanted in these I call PRIVATE folders. But, for general email I didn't want to keep hanging around anywhere, it eventually got deleted from my INBOX (on website or other device) and went to TRASH. Of course, sent email went to SENT folder and drafts to DRAFT. Had I set my email up to automatically archive certain email, it would have gone to ARCHIVE.
So what happened? After tons of testing scenarios I learned how emails progress from one stage, i.e., INBOX, TRASH (I'll keep it focused between just these and just for Suddenlink accounts) and across devices. An email gets sent to me by another user and lands in Suddenlink INBOX. My other devices (PC and Kindle) are not powered on. It sits there until I power on PC and bring up Thunderbird which fetches my email from Suddenlink via IMAP protocol. the particular email remains on Suddenlink INBOX and now is also on PC (Thunderbird) INBOX. Fine so far. I read it and since it isn't one I really know I want to keep permanently, I delete it. It now goes to TRASH on the PC. I logged on to Website to see what has transpired there. The INBOX email was gone (synchronized with my PC INBOX and also went to its TRASH, again synchronized with PC. This is the way IMAP works and I was fine with it until now that some occurrence on Suddenlink, PC, or Kindle decided to delete all past emails beyond 5/14/18 which caused them to be deleted from all devices! I know I don't have the facilities or patience to do that for heaps of emails that were in there, so I can only look at some issue at Suddnlink that did this. We're talking about only 4 days of TRASH being left available and scores of older ones deleted.
This alone wasn't too much of a concern, but when I realized a lot of sensitive emails, e.g., emails re to banks, broker, shopping, personal that I simply deleted are still being maintained and VIEWABLE within TRASH (of course I am talking about the ones BEFORE the strange occurrence that deleted them) on the Website by Suddenlink, I started to question why. What increased my concern was that the customer service rep I talking too could verify that emails were in my TRASH. This ws peaked even more (another issue also) when he sent a TEST email to me. The FROM was spoofed to use my account name, the TO was that same account name. Does that mean anybody in Suddenlink customer support can send email to anybody with MY account name spoofed on that email? Sure looks like they can. This is both a PRIVACY and SECURITY issue now!
Anyway, back to the IMAP issue at hand.
My tests showed the synchronization between Website and PC and later including the Kindle. If I deleted an email from any device, an IMAP command was sent to other devices using IMAP and it was deleted there too. I was fine with the deletion, but wasn't fine with what was kept on TRASH on all the devices, particularly Suddenlink website. Imagine sensitive data in emails, like account numbers, charges, payment sates, names, addresses, etc. and what could be gleamed from the data. Not only the sensitive data itself, but an entire chronology of your entire financial habits/dealings, the stores you use, when you do things, where you do them from, other people/companies you work with, etc. A slight hack to Suddenlink email server and capture of the TRASH boxes provides all that information. So, be warned.
Now my actions: I had to shut this capture and display of trashed emails by Suddenlink down! POP email protocol seemed like a good selection since it "generally" doesn't synchronize. Yes, once the email is downloaded to your PC or Kindle, it remains on Suddenlink INBOX. But, when you delete it (going to TRASH on PC), it is removed from Suddenlink INBOX (you would want this and it does work properly). But, once again it went to there TRASH! SO, there are PREFERENCES to change on the Suddnlink server that allow yo to actually delete WITHOUT sending to TRASH folder that you can set. Remember, Suddenlink is going to keep your emails around anyway behind the scenes, but at least you can manage what remains in you TRASH. SO, set via PREFERENCES to NOT send deleted email to TRASH.
Next step was to set up email protocol POP on the PC (Thunderbird). This was easy in principle from Thunderbird perspective), but a headache to get working. All kind of problems, like your account is not an IMAP4 account, or unable to logon. I can't even remember all the different errors I saw! So, instead let me just focus on the correct procedures to make the IMAP to POP change and even with these I can't guarantee painless experiences.
First, beware that to see anything change on Suddenlink side you have to do GET MAIL. changes and synchronization aren't made available to you unless you do this. Also on PC side, your best off continually Getting Messages often to ensure changes are taking place.
Next, go ahead on the PC (Thunderbird) and go to account and server settings. For the Incoming messages, change IMAP.Suddenlink.net port 993 to POP.suddenlink.net port 995. That was easy until you realize you still have to wait until Suddenlink acknowledges the change and allows it. I ran into all kinds of problems and tried all kinds of solutions, some of which were having to change passwords, having to delete the account from Thunderbird and ADD back in specifying within their wizard to use POP AND Manually setting the POP port to 993 (this seemed to be the solution that always worked), seeing Thunderbirds "General" error when it can't figure out the specific one "Not an IMAP4 account", etc. Many of Thunderbird's error messages are useless to determine specific problem! Eventually, by removing account and adding back as stated above, I got POP working and now tested it. Along with the Suddenlink PREFERENCES change as stated earlier, email worked as expected between PC and Suddenlink. Emails TRASHed only remained on PC TRASH and gone from Suddenlink. I also made a rule for myself to ONLY play with emails from my PC and never from Suddenlink Website unless absolutely necessary. Why? Because if I want to keep deleted emails in my TRASH temporarily that feature was now disabled by the PREFERENCES change! So, I should never delete an email while on Suddenlink website if I might want it later. I feel a bit more comfortable now that Suddenlink TRASH doesn't keep sensitive data around, at least displayable by first-level support! Hackers of course might have to look elsewhere for the info, which now is so scary!
Now you ask me, what about Kindle? I could never get the Kindle to operate using POP. It always wanted IMAP set up. I can play with this later, but it did tell me that I can have a mixed bag of email protocols. If I do anything from Kindle, it will synchronize with host Suddenlink website accordingly. I need to test it re deleting emails where sensitive data is to ensure it isn't kept anyway on website. But, for now it becomes a procedural matter for me to understand the differences and apply my management of the issues.
I think this covers the IMAP issues. Hopefully I can return here to refresh my memory should I need to and to avoid similar problems making the switch from IMAP to POP. I may be back to document more privacy/security issues as I remember them, or to document more problems that came up while making the changes. For now I am comfortable. You need to be too.
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