273865 - Deleting Emails are not removed from Inbox file - Virus threat persists

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 183837

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[merluza]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Build Identifier: http://thunderbird.bric.de/index.php?page=downloads

Some times, I get viruses in attachments. I do not open those emails, of 
course, but delete them and empty the trashcan. Nevertheless, all emails are 
stored in the Inbox data file on the hard disk. although Thunderbird (and 
other mozilla emailers such as netscape) do not show the email anymore, but 
physically the data still exists. When i then scan for viruses (kaspersky's 
lab anti virus), it keeps on telling me that the file INBOX is infected.

i also noted that when i move all files from the inbox file to another folder, 
the mails are copied there, but the inbox file is not correctly emptied, e.g. 
the data is still in there. this is a major hassle as the file size of INBOX 
steadily increases and reaches levels of 100 MB, even if there is no mail in 
it anymore.

can somebody fix that in a future version as it is very disturbing. i cannot 
recommend this software to small companies whose users do not know how to work 
around those things (manual deletion of the file) and are scared by the virus 
alert they receive.

than you.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. get emails
2. move emails to personal folder, different from the inbox
3. see that the files are moved, but the size of the inbox file has not 
decreased!

Actual Results:  
inbox file size stays the same, possible virus data persists

Expected Results:  
deleted the contents of the inbox file

Comment 1

[Oliver Klee]

This is by design for performance reasons. You need to compact that folder to
actually remove deleted mail from the inbox file.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 183837 ***

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

verified

this is by design because of performance reasons with the mbox Format