Emails being marked as read

Problem reported by YS Tech - 3/20/2018 at 9:50 AM

Submitted

Hi,

I have a client who has 3 email accounts, 2 of these are exhibiting the same issue.

Issue: When emails come in to SmarterMail, they all get marked as read, even though my client hasn't clicked on them. I viewed his account and saw the same happen.

I've asked him if the emails are being picked up anywhere else and they are but we've disabled these other devices now and the problem persists.

We've also changed the passwords on the 2 accounts, just in case anyone else was picking them up and its still the same.

Anyone have any idea whats happening.

Is there an activity log anywhere that I can see what's marking the emails as read (this may only show if SM was doing it i'm sure, but that would help at least).

Or is there a setting in SM that would exhibit this behaviour?

I am all up to date SM V16.3.6649

He uses a Mac and iPhone and an iPad (if that helps), all IMAP. There again, so do I and none of mine show this behaviour.

Any settings I should be looking at?

Or any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

12 Replies

Reply to Thread

YS Tech Replied

3/21/2018 at 1:57 AM

Further testing does show a SM bug.
when viewing main inbox on the failing account, the number on the envelope is showing 2 unread, but in the list of email it only shows 1 in bold as unread.
Also when testing, all of my test emails are instantly marked a read while watching the inbox and with no focus on the top emails coming in.
Any idea what the issue is?

YS Tech Replied

3/21/2018 at 4:23 AM

And a bit more testing from within the SM interface:
1) Email is not bold (showing as unread) instantly when it arrives in inbox
2) The number of unread items does increment when that email comes in and I am notified of the new email via the browser notifications.
3) If I then click on that new email it doesn't decrement the number, so it shows still as an unread message according to the number (even though its not shown in bold, so showing as read)
4) I have tested in Safari, Firefox and Chrome and its the same on all.
5) I have tested on other accounts and the 2 i've tested seem to work as you would expect, so its an account specific issue (2 accounts that I know of).

YS Tech Replied

3/21/2018 at 7:00 AM

So thats all the testing I think I can do.

All external devices are turned off, no power.
Passwords to email addresses have been changed.
and it still behaves as stated above.
So there shouldn't be any device that could pick the emails up and mark them as read. This points to something in SM doing so (unless you can tell me otherwise)?
Unless a third party somewhere is able to follow the email password changes and still pick the emails up, which would be even more worrying.

Over to you guys?

YS Tech Replied

3/22/2018 at 3:24 AM

A bit more testing:
I changed the password so the client doesn't know it.
Just viewing in his account the emails that come in now.
If I send an email from an account not on the same server then it sometimes increments the number of unread emails.
If I send to the account using and email account on the same server it doesn't register as an unread message.
In all cases the email list view doesn't show any in bold, so I can't tell which are unread.

So, I sent 1 email from outside the mail server, this incremented the number of unread messages, then i sent one from inside the same server, this had the action of decrementing the unread number!
Now when i send, inside or out, the number doesn't seem to change.
And has just closed the browser tab.
After going back in, there are no unread messages showing, either number or in the email list.
There definitely seems to be something wrong with this account?

It also only affects his Inbox.
I created a sub folder called Test and added content filtering to the test email account i was sending from and the email gets put into the test folder, is marked as unread and is in bold so it looks like its been unread.

So looks like an inbox issue?

YS Tech Replied

3/29/2018 at 4:53 AM

Has nobody come across any of these issues recently?

Matthew Shepard Replied

3/29/2018 at 6:59 AM

I have just started getting reports of this re-surfacing this week. It is actually really strange because I will sync my phone in the morning and some e-mails that were received over night are marked as read. I do leave my web browser at work logged into e-mail, but I do think this issue is back.

Paul R Replied

3/30/2018 at 11:32 AM

We are getting the same report from a few users. New messages being immediately marked as Read, but the user has not touched them and NO other devices check the account.

We also tried changing the password and giving only ONE device the new pw, just to "break" any unknown devices checking the box-- same behavior, un-touched messages get marked as Read immediately.

Stefan Mössner Replied

4/1/2018 at 11:25 PM

Yes, I can confirm this behavior too. And I found out that there's an option to change this:

1. Go to Settings | Account

2. Disable "Mark mails read retrieved via POP3" (translated from German, I hope you can find it)

It doesn't solve this behavior totally but it's much better than before disabling this option.

Paul R Replied

4/2/2018 at 8:11 AM

1. Go to Settings | Account

2. Disable "Mark mails read retrieved via POP3" (translated from German, I hope you can find it)

That's the first thing we tried, but it didn't make any improvement.

YS Tech Replied

4/3/2018 at 2:17 AM

Yes went through that but the client uses IMAP, we did try it but no difference.

Strangely enough i'm starting to get a similar issue now with my client app, this quite often shows unread messages in the inbox (normally 1) but when i try to view it there aren't any unread!

ST, it looks like there's an issue here, any response?

Any ideas