Does Fastmail auto-purge Trash now?
 

I’ve noticed my Trash folder only has about the last week’s worth of emails, even though I don’t have purging turned on and I haven’t manually deleted anything. Is this a new policy by Fastmail? If so I don’t see a setting to change it.

I'm not aware of any change to their policy.
My trash is set to autopurge at 365 days, and on checking my trash folder, the oldest trash is around 365 days old.

I can't comment on any action that might take place if autopurge was not set.

Same here. I just had a look and there are still items in my trash folder that I deleted in 2014... so whatever it is that's changed for you doesn't seem to be universal.

Be sure to check the advanced preferences of the Trash folder/label. The Auto-purge setting is at the very bottom. Auto-purge will only permanently delete messages which are not pinned. Messages are auto-purged based on the date they were deleted to Trash -- not the date the message arrived at your account.

If you use an email client with your Fastmail account, it may have an auto-purge setting which is deleting old messages in Trash. Fastmail has no control over how the messages are purged by such an external system, such as an email client connected using IMAP (which has access to all subscribed folders in your account). The external client can also delete pinned messages.

I set my Trash folder to auto-purge after 31 days. I just checked the Trash folder, and I see messages deleted in the past 31 days just as expected. I cleaned up a lot of folders by deleted old emails a couple of weeks ago, so those very old messages haven't reached the 31 day age limit yet, even though the message dates are from many years ago.

Bill

Do you use Apple clients?
 

Are you using an iPhone or other Apple product?

I think they default to emptying the trash after 30 days (or maybe even 7 days) so you always need to change that manually (and quickly) after adding Fastmail as an account.

I’m using an iPhone but I don’t see any configuration option for trash emptying.

It’s under Mail —> Accounts —> Account —> Advanced.

There are four options:
- Never
- After one day
- After one week
- After one month

Just wanted to add a caveat to this.. messages that are pinned in any folder (presumably other than Trash) are UNPINNED when deleted to Trash.

Interestingly, they are NOT unpinned when manually dragged/drug into the Trash folder.

No idea what happens to messages that are pinned in Trash (whether Bill is correct in stating that they are not auto-purged), but who would pin a message in Trash?

In Fastmail Help:
Also note this in Fastmail Help:
Messages disappear from trash (Apple)

Bill