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7 New IMAP Mailboxes have appeared

Bob Ulius
Hi folks, My host updated in a fairly major way (new CPanel) and caused a few issues. One I do not understand is suddenly there are 7 new IMAP mailboxes on my iPhone and iPad and can be found in webmail by showing all folders. These are below the expected folders and show like this including the nesting: INBOX DRAFTS SENT JUNK TRASH ARCHIVE INFECTED ITEMS (then the new below) mail virtual me@mysite.com spam INBOX dovecot_index dove_index_log What ARE these last7?? Can they be deleted on my iPhone and iPad safely? Are they needed at all? Appreciate a bit of help. Difficult getting good explanations on this. ~Bob

Comments

17 comments

Date Votes
  • Bob Ulius
    Ahhh. lost the formatting. Everything below "mail" is nested.
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  • cPanelLauren
    Hello, I would contact your hosting provider as none of the following should be displaying as mailboxes: mail virtual me@mysite.com spam INBOX dovecot_index dove_index_log But this isn't something you'd have access to investigate.
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  • Bob Ulius
    Thanks. I will contact my host, but so hard to get a quality answer. Can you tell me, is it a problem these appear? And if not, can I safely delete them on my iPhone and iPad?
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  • cPanelLauren
    Hello, I'm not sure I'd qualify it as a problem without more information on the directory structure as well as what occurred to cause them to display as such. It's not the intended behavior though. What looks like happened is all hidden files were added to the directory structure.
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  • Bob Ulius
    JUST getting back to this believe it or not. Host says normal and every IMAP account sees these folders. Cannot tell me how to hide them on IOS devices. Any suggestions how to escalate or where else to turn for assistance?
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  • Bob Ulius
    Just tried something. Created a new mail account and results were as expetced. Notne of these odd virtual folders. Does that help at all? I worry about support at host trying to fix this and making it worse :)
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  • em.ci
    JUST getting back to this believe it or not. Host says normal and every IMAP account sees these folders. Cannot tell me how to hide them on IOS devices. Any suggestions how to escalate or where else to turn for assistance?

    I know that doesn't help you but you should definitely change your hoster, if that was really the answer which you recieved... These are definitely not default IMAP-folders. It is dangerous to suggest solutions here without looking at the case in detail. The hoster must take care of this and contact the cPanel support.
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  • DennisMidjord
    Some email clients will create their own folders. Have you checked if that is the case?
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  • Bob Ulius
    This is in the file manager at Cpanel as well as Webmail and any IMAP client. Definitely host created. I will try to escalate today.
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  • cPanelLauren
    So, if you don't have root access I don't have another route for you to investigate this besides your hosting provider. If they are unsure how to resolve this because it is not normal behavior we're happy to assist them if they'd like to open a support ticket. It would be normal to see hidden files in /home/$user/mail/ (hidden files are anything with a "." at the front) within the file manager but not normal to view them in webmail or a mail client. I use iOS with my mail and can confirm I don't see these, you can as well with the newly created account. One of my email accounts as shown in iOS Compared to my file manager display of the same account with hidden files being shown:
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  • DennisMidjord
    This is in the file manager at Cpanel as well as Webmail and any IMAP client. Definitely host created. I will try to escalate today.

    If you've setup the account as IMAP, and your email client creates new folders, those folders will also be created on the server. That's how IMAP works.
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  • Bob Ulius
    No, Email client has not created any new folders. These were created on the Client (and server) when the host cutover to Dovecot. So, I created a new email account to test at the host. This new email account has only the expected folders. Give me a few minutes and let me show you from file manager. And need to mention, this has been my primary email account for maybe 18 years. I do not wish to risk it failing to work. But would love to clean this up. Be right back....
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  • Bob Ulius
    OK, this is a newly created test email account. Looks fine to me:
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  • Bob Ulius
    These are the files in the email account in question:
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  • Bob Ulius
    Does that help at all?
    0
  • em.ci
    I personally would backup the mail folder /home/user/mail first. Afterwards I would try this workaround: Since you have a test account, you can move the folders from the compromised account to the test account folder. Example: info@example.abc = compromised account test@example.abc = newly created test account
    • /home/user/mail/example.abc/info/cur "COPY TO" /home/user/mail/example.abc/test/cur
    • /home/user/mail/example.abc/info/new "COPY TO" /home/user/mail/example.abc/test/new
    • /home/user/mail/example.abc/info/.Sent "COPY TO" /home/user/mail/example.abc/test/.Sent
    • /home/user/mail/example.abc/info/.MyFolder "COPY TO" /home/user/mail/example.abc/test/.Myfolder
    • etc.....
    But only copy the desired folders, not the dovecot.*.* files. After you have copied all folders, check if everything is ok under "test@example.abc". If everything is working under test@example.abc, you can do this: Rename /home/user/mail/example.abc/info to /home/user/mail/example.abc/OLD_info Rename /home/user/mail/example.abc/test to /home/user/mail/example.abc/info This is a exhausting way to fix this, but if I don't have "root" access and don't get help from my hoster, that's exactly what I would do. Please do not forget to backup the mail folder in case something goes wrong!
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  • Bob Ulius
    Thanks. I understand what you are saying. I feel the risk :) Going to try to escalate this morning. As well as try to find out why there are 18 new FTP users starting with SS (Simple Scripts?) that were not there before. Appreciate the help. Will let you know. ~Bob
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