247444 - mail not really deleted

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 223574

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Ric]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9

In my local folders, and for those of the email accounts
once a message has been created, it is never deleted, not really.

The interface in Thunderbird shows no messages.

But, looking into the actual folder area on the hard drive, you can see files
there with the names of the folders,  Inbox, Drafts, Trash, etc.

If you delete a message,  the file size does not change.
Even if you close/open Thunderbird again.

I would include a security component to this problem, if you think something has
been deleted, but it hasn't, then someone eles could find it, unexpectedly.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Create a new folder - say 'test'
2.  Move a message from another box, say 'inbox' to that folder, 
3.  Exit, start again
4.  Move the message back.
5.  Observe test appears empty.
6.  Check actual disk folders, see that inbox is larger and that test also has a
size.

Comment 1

[Ric]

Further details.

If you have say a 10k message that you move from Inbox to Test
then back from test to inbox - both folders will grow on the disk.

Chosing to 'Compact this folder' does reset the files on the disk. 

If you delte the folder, it is moved into the trash.  But if you then delete it
from the trash, all traces of that folder are gone.  Perhaps because this is a
folder - and not a message? 

Comment 2

[Ric]

Desired behaviour

There should not be any need to manually compact folders of e-mail.

The trash works as expected, delete a message, it moves to trash, where it has
to be deleted / emptied to make it fully gone.

But leaving the message in a file on the disk to be discovered, is not desirable.

News, on the other hand, I would expect compact to remove message bodies after
some user defined time.  

Comment 3

[Ric]

I could not choose the version - it was happening in .4
and is happening in  .7   

I did not test those versions in between.  

I am using the software from the main download, not one of the daily builds.

Comment 4

[Ric]

There is a preference to 'Empty Trash on Exit' 
how about switching that, or adding to that the 'Compact Folders on Exit' 
if people think the keeping the disk files around is needed.

Comment 5

[OstGote!]

The messages are not really deleted in the mailbox files because of performance
reasons. 

I would say, this bug could be duped against bug 237464 or Bug 223574.

Related bugs: 
Bug 205756 Compact folders should be enabled by default
Bug 197605 Allow other triggers for compacting message folders

Comment 6

[Ric]

I have no issue closing this one - as the other 4 you pointed out address the
same issue.

What do other email programs do?  Eudora, Peagasus, Outlook ? 
Even unix based mail programs like  pine, mutt and elm ?


The one issue not brought up in the other reports is one of security.
If I have a shared computer, and who doesn't, I may be thinking certain messages
are gone. When in fact they are still there waiting to be discovered.

In some legal settings, this could be a serious problem.  

At the very least, in the next update, a warning needs to go in to the help
system that mail is not deleted until the message is deleted, trash is emptied
and both the original folder and the trash folders are compacted.



*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 223574 ***