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Getting Rid of E-mail that have "deleted."

  • 2 replies
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  • Last reply by sfhowes

TBHow
TBHow
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Used ClamXav and it found phishing e-mails in various Thunderbird folders (InBoxes, Trash, etc.) I understand that most of these emails aren't dangerous per se (I'm aware of the ones tagged), but I still want to get rid of them permanently. I have put them in the trash, emptied the trash, compacted the folders, and even installed Xpunge as an Add-on. Yet every time I go to the TB profiles and open the InBox or Trash of a particular mailbox (it's a document file), all that stuff is still there. In fact, if I run ClamXav again after "deleting" all the e-mails, the phishing warnings still appear for those elements I thought I deleted. What's going on? Thanks.

Used ClamXav and it found phishing e-mails in various Thunderbird folders (InBoxes, Trash, etc.) I understand that most of these emails aren't dangerous per se (I'm aware of the ones tagged), but I still want to get rid of them permanently. I have put them in the trash, emptied the trash, compacted the folders, and even installed Xpunge as an Add-on. Yet every time I go to the TB profiles and open the InBox or Trash of a particular mailbox (it's a document file), all that stuff is still there. In fact, if I run ClamXav again after "deleting" all the e-mails, the phishing warnings still appear for those elements I thought I deleted. What's going on? Thanks.

All Replies (2)

user1121639
user1121639
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if I run ClamXav again after "deleting" all the e-mails, the phishing warnings still appear for those elements I thought I deleted. What's going on? Thanks.

When you delete messages in Thunderbird, they will still exist in the "mbox" file for that Thunderbird folder on the hard drive until you "compact" that folder.

ClamXav is checking the actual files on the hard drive, so until that folder is "compacted", ClamXav will still say the problem e-mails are present.

So you have to both empty the trash and "Compact Folders" after deleting those problem e-mails: Select any folder for the account on the left side, then Thunderbird menu: File: Compact Folders.


Regarding the "Xpunge" add-on: I have not used it so I do not know how it works. Nor will I try, since it is self proclaimed to be useful for versions of Thunderbird up to version 25. The current version of Thunderbird is 45.7.

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Normally, when you compact folders as you have done the deleted files are permanently removed from the computer. But if you have not excluded the TB profile folder from ClamXav's 'Sentry' (the recommended setup), it's possible ClamXav does not allow the compacting process to permanently remove the deleted messages.