Last week, my school district received an email from our tech department about a change over of our email servers. The gist of the email was that school site email accounts would be taken down one at a time, transferred to the new servers and then brought back up before moving on to the next school. It also said that depending on the amount of info on each server, and even each employee's account, the time for the change over could take an hour or two to a day or two. Shortly after that email, I received my own personal email from the tech department. It seemed as if the size of my email account was one of those that could cause the process to take days rather than hours. I have been aware that I am an email hoarder. I DO delete most of them, but then never empty out the deleted folder because I'm worried about needing to find them at a later time.
After deleting 10 years worth of deleted emails, there are still over 2,000 unread emails in the folder, which means in all there are even more. But at least the purge got rid of most of them. One of these days I'll have to go in and get rid of the ones that will definitely not be needed, but finding that time is hard. Case in point, it took me twelve years to do it! But in those terms, it's like I'm starting from a clean slate...sort of.
Wow, I liberally define things as spam. But I have over 11,000 in a gmail, and I have five other mail accounts. Not counting the defunct ones like hotmail.
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed though you had so many.
Well, twelve years worth is bound to add up. :) I get anywhere from 20 - 50 work emails a day, and none of those are spam. The spam ones go into our spam blocker system and I don't even see those.
DeleteWow!! And I thought I had a lot piled up!
ReplyDeleteI periodically get on a kick and start deleting them. I'm pretty sure when mine go into the 'trash', they only stay there a certain number of days (maybe 30?) before they're permanently deleted. Ha - and we know permanently doesn't really mean gone forever. Everything is out there in cyberspace somewhere, I'm sure. ;)
Recently, my Mac has been deleting my deleted emails after a day. I have changed the settings, but can't seem to figure out how to find them. I find that using the email on the phone or the iPad or the macbook sometimes makes it hard to catch up with itself. I'm sure someone could find them, as you said, I just wish I could! :)
DeleteMy work email "goes away" after 90 days unless I save it and I have had to learn to be diligent about saving what I think I need. I used to use my business email for personal stuff which was really foolish, and when I changed jobs in 2015 I stopped that practice. It still makes me uneasy when I think my former employer has a bunch of my personal stuff. Nothing incriminating, just a little embarrassing -- but I'm guessing they don't have any reason to read it!
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of business email, I use it much less than I once did. That's because once it's out there, it's out there and potentially discoverable in a lawsuit. So I'm much more careful about it than I used to be, and have more phone and personal conversations.
I'm mildly anal retentive, so the old personal emails get on my nerves. Therefore I'm pretty good about deleting them regularly.
That 90 day feature is probably a good thing, however diligence would definitely be important. The emails have made me lazy about saving or printing documents because I can just find it in my list of emails.
DeleteI never do anything personal on my work email, just for that reason. We have to sign all sorts of paperwork every year agreeing that our account isn't ours and can be looked at at any time, etc etc, so it's definitely important to be careful...no slagging the bosses. :) I did find out recently that any emails that concern students (like documentation or info) can be subpoenaed as records if there is ever a court hearing (custody, etc). However if we hand document the info, it can't. That's something new that has made me think. When in the past I'd shoot off an email to the admin about a student, now it might not be a good idea to do so.
I'm better on my personal email as most things I get are spam-lke (catalogs, daily emails, etc). They're so easy to delete. And I have a save folder for things I don't want to lose. I have several folders for work stuff to move emails, now that I think of it, but during a busy day it doesn't usually happen...clearly!
I'm a lawyer by education but no longer practice, but I'm keenly aware of the discovery rules, etc. We've kind of come full circle in that we thought email was so great to document things and now, for that very reason, many of us are not using it as much.
DeleteI'm not the only one? I'm an email hoarder, too.
ReplyDeleteI think teachers are hoarders by nature. :) If it's not supplies, it's emails!
Deletewhoa!
ReplyDeletei think my husband's email would resemble something very similar.