Email question

mmallico · Jun 7, 2011

I think I posted my previous post in the wrong section, so here is my question. I am thinking about writing a short story, but it is based upon the ambiguous world of email and attachments. My question is. How long does an email service provider keep attachments when they are sent to a person? Are they deleted in a certain time period or when the email gets full?

Anaximander · Jun 7, 2011

It depends on your provider - some will scrub old attachments to save space. GMail keeps them for quite a while, largely due to the enormous inbox space they give you. I just checked my own GMail account, and it still has attachments on emails I received four years ago.

rainsmom · Jun 7, 2011

If you are downloading mail from your service provider, as opposed to reading it on the Web, it depends on your settings. If you have it set up to save a copy of the mail on the server, it will do so until you run out of account space. If not, they don't keep one at all.

For the record, I've NEVER (going back to 1993) set up my mail to save a copy on the server when I've had a downloadable account.

Email question

mmallico

Anaximander

rainsmom

Feeling like an old timer