Get ready for another
big glitch in iPhone OS 3.0: it seems like the Spotlight search cache doesn't sync message status with the mail client, so you can still pull up old messages with Spotlight if you know the subject line. Yeah, that's not okay -- we just verified that the bug exists on our phones, using both POP and IMAP. We're not sure when the search cache finally deletes emails, but it doesn't appear to happen quickly: Matt Janssen, who discovered the bug, says he's been able to pull up emails three or four months old. We've heard whispers its fixed in iPhone OS 3.1, but until there's a confirmed fix we'll be using the Gmail web interface, thanks. Video after the break.
posted Aug 17th 2009 5:31PM
It's not a bug. It's a hidden feature!
bag of hurt.
The title is rather misleading. The issue here is Spotlight search not clearing its cache. Mail app is working fine!
No, the title is NOT misleading. This is a bug with iPhone OS 3.0. The title says nothing about the mail app.
Face palm*
I've known about this for a while...?
Oops
Face Palm?!
Face Palm Pre?!
...
The very best in security. You can always trust Apple.
Mac: Hi, I'm a Mac.
PC: And I'm a PC.
Mac: What are you doing, PC?
PC: Oh, just playing around with the new Apple iPhone 3GS.
Mac: Oh, I see, that's great. So you've switched too?
PC: No, no, this is your phone. I still need my Windows Mobile phone because I sometimes need to do more than one thing at once.
Mac: My iPhone? So, you like it?
PC: It's pretty slick. Especially this universal search thing....hmm, I seem to have found a few emails that weren't in your inbox or trash...
PC: ...
PC: ...omg
Um, isn't it pulling from the Trash folder?
I was always hoping they'd make Time Machine for my iphone
it pulls from the trash folder, and Junk E-mail folder in Gmail.
I don't see this being that big of a deal except for corporations... or cheating husbands/wives.
It is definitely a bug. But a bug that only affects a handful of shady emailers.
you just listed 3/4 of all America!!!
Except it's taking up everyone's memory. Will this sell higher capacity iphones; the world will never know.
@fastm3driver: Sure, it'll take up more memory, but keep in mind how big a typical email is. You're talking on the order of hundreds of thousands of emails before you start really getting hit hard.
It's only sticking around in the cache because it's *not* taking up a lot of memory. The cache likely flushes itself as a function of memory use so that it never grows more than a certain size.
Good point!
It's not a bug. I mean - when I move an item to the trash I fully expect and want it to remain on my device. That's why I moved it to the trash to begin with.
Sincerely,
All Apple Apologists
Apple sucks.
@bjsguess: Umm, I don't think you fully understand. Even after emptying the trash, the email is still found in spotlight. I tried this myself, and it is indeed a bug.
@ssoltero
When I actually empty the trash on my accounts, it totally wipes it and no longer shows up in the search. It works the same way on my Mac- trashed items can still be searched for, but on my iPod touch (same as in this video) this doesn't happen at ALL.
Then again, maybe I'm just one of the people confirming that this is fixed in the update (I'm running 3.1). If so, the problem has actually had a fix for quite some time, and the solution will be distributed shortly. I really don't see this as being newsworthy... when was the last time a Windows Mobile flaw was pointed out and took up an entire article, eh Engadget?
This has not been fixed as of iPhone OS 3.1 beta 3. I just tried it.
Just kidding, it has been fixed. Just wanted to make you sweat a little.
Thanks for clearing that up nub.
You're stupid.
I fail to see how using Gmail would help, they still keep all of your old emails, just don't let you see them!
Oh no.. better tell my buddy. His lady has a tendency to go snooping...
Spotlight appears to search my Trash folder on Exchange. When I both delete an email AND remove it from the trash, after a restart Spotlight sees it no more.
Are you sure the emails aren't just in the Trash folder on your email client's site?
lulz.
Looks like a mini-version of Time Machine is now included in iPhone OS 3.1, but released accidentally on 3.0 :(
Rise from your grave...
... and bring me some grapes.
Never give up.
Never let down.
I really want to delete the mail app from my iPhone, it's neigh-useless for gmail. =/
Actually, I *really* wish that the app store would allow a gmail app -- competition is good for everyone! RAWWRRRRR!
I hear ya there man, while the gmail mobile web thing is very useful the fact that I can't read emails offline kills the usability there.
Come to think of it, why hasnt' google done a native app for gmail? Guess its that whole bullshit about apps duplicating iPhone functions?
So... a deleted message can be found on the iPhone... how is this a security bug? If I loose my iPhone the least of my concerns are the messages I deleted. How about the rest of the email on the phone that wasn't deleted. Not to mention that email you deleted is still out there on the person's computer that sent the email. Seems like a silly thing to worry about and not a real good reason to tell people to stop using the built in email client.
excellent point
How about the fact that the email is in the trash is because you wanted it to be deleted. If I wanted to keep a copy of a message around I probably wouldn't have gone to the trouble of deleting it and emptying the trash. Regardless of the implications of breaches of privacy or embarrassment, there is still a bug with the system. So if you don't want zombie mail in your spotlight search I would agree that not using the built in email client would be a reasonable work around to the issue.
...and what if you wanted that offensive spam you deleted resurface at just the right time?...we have an app for that.
wow, the email app only has a few basic tasks it HAS to do right, and the extras that it's allowed to mess up. deleting email is really a rudementary function that should have been tested thoroughly. Oh yeah I am a software developer so I'm allowed to be on this soap box.
@rogelio if you were a software developer you would understand that Mail and Spotlight are two completely separate apps, one of which is working properly and the other of which is not. I think you just lost the right to be on that soap box.
I've realized that a long time ago, but never took it this way....exactly as someone said, if you send it or received it, some also has it! so what's the big deal on this???
maybe if you delete the message from your "deleted mail" folder they wiil go away???
such a waste of time!!
It's fixed in 3.1.
Has any one else had the bug where the email app makes old deleted emails pop as new? This is extremely annoying and I've had to live with about 28 emails marked as new even though they're over a month old. Once deleted other older ones keep popping up as new. Extremely annoying.
Yeah that happens to me often. Emails that I read get tagged as new at random times. Ans sometimes when I delete an email the come back like the phone wasn't sure I really wanted to send them to the trash.
sounds like you have an imap problem. when it happens again, log into your webmail if you have it, and see if the message is still on the server as new.
Well from one standpoint it actually could be useful. I know I've deleted emails I meant to keep before.
nice dock
shocking!
can i just say that yes, every little bit of iphone information has to appear because at the end of the day the iphone users are a large part of this community as they in many cases are the obsessive techno freaks!
We crosspost things we think the Classic reader would want to see -- as much as we'd like everyone to read all three sites, a lot of people just hit Classic. We've got some ideas on how to make it all work better in the future, though, so stay tuned.
And none of them are about the iPhone conquering Japan as the top selling phone for the month of July.
Meaningless article.
i have tried to recreate this many times from the time i heard about this (a couple months ago, great timing engadget) and have not been able to on my iphone 3g running 3.0 and 3.0.1 (i just tried it again with an email from amazon that was in my trash titled new titles for kindle, i deleted it from the trash, went to spotlight, typed in the title, nothing came up, typed in amazon and a couple emails came up but none that had new titles for kindle)
This is kind of a ridiculous bug to have Apple... I mean, why would you create a searching feature that just keeps getting larger and larger and doesn't purge old entries??? That sounds like a sorry excuse for programming to me...
3.1 beta one came out just a few days after 3.0, and it fixed this issue entirely. It obviously wasn't a hard fix, and they are almost ready to distribute 3.1, so I don't really care about this bug (then again, I've been running 3.1 for quite some time now, so :P).
Gosh, I can't wait for 3.1.
golly gee, you don't have to.
You guys are freaking out over nothing. I just tried this on my phone, and the only reason it comes up at all is because when you "delete" a message, it moves the message to the trash to be deleted some time in the future (there's a setting for how often you want to delete the Trashed messages). This is pretty much standard behavior on pretty much every mail client on the planet.
I suppose Apple make an option to immediately delete messages, or to have Spotlight ignore the trash folders of your email inbox.
You weren't paying attention. These are messages that were already deleted from the trash.
3.1 has had this problem fixed for ages now (and it came out RIGHT after 3.0), and I personally find it hilarious that anyone would care enough about a tiny little glitch like this to make such a fuss over it.
You want a real glitch? I found out how to freeze a Mac's desktop when I was 12 and they still haven't fixed that issue. Once, just to make a point (and for sh*ts and giggles) I froze up over half the desktops in the Apple store. They ended up relaunching the Finder just to fix it :D Apple Geniuses my @$$!! LoL ˆuˆ
How is this an security issue. If I had important emails on my iPhone I would never give it to other persons. I use Exchange with my iPhone 3G and have no Problem.
And if your Emails are really so important go and buy a Blackberry!!!
If you are paranoid about your phone spying on your emails, here's a protip. go to the "trash" folder for each account, tap "Edit" and then Delete All. That should clear up any of your sensitive emails from Spotlight search.
And this is a big issue why? You need the full title to the missing email... Besides if someone had access to your iphone you got bigger issues then being able to search fro deleted mail by the exact subject line!
Yeah, no kidding. If you have access to your account, you can pretty much get any deleted emails in their entirety from your email provider by claiming that you deleted them on accident..
If an unfriendly entity has physical access to your unlocked hardware, you've pretty much already lost the game, no?
The news of iphone being nyumber one was right, for one week. The cnn news claiming a whole month has a correcting update at the end now.
It dropped from #1 in a week and the 32G model is number 6 at the last statistics. Not top, but still pretty good for nonjapanese phone. Intrestingly 3G 8GB is selling slightly better than 3GS 16GB, those being at places 24 and 25 respectively.
I noticed this as soon as I did the update when it came out.
Just go into the settings and uncheck Mail from spotlight search!
Newone, that was an old report. The one I mentioned is from today.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/08/17/iphone.3gs.tops.in.japan/
I don't know if anybody else has had this experience but i find that the mail app shows doubles of all of my emails as well. Anybody know how to fix this?
I kind of like this feature. Just a little bit of a time machine in case I accidently deleted something I shouldn't have.
clap clap clap
I guess you missed the boat on a previous post that this is a feature that apple apologists really truly wanted.
ur time machine won't seem so timely when a thief recovers your old email to yourself with your passwords.
just a thought
This has actually been a bug for some time now, i've even submitted it as a bug report to Apple. I got a response awhile back that they were aware of the problem and were looking into it.
Cause I had almost my entire mailbox coming back in Spotlight.
Has anyone tried emptying the trash? I did that on mine and they didn't show up anymore. Works like the Mac OS trash as far as I can tell- trashed items are still searchable.
If it's the spotlight cache, then only the subject line can be read. Unless it's actually still in the trash, in which case, newsflash, you have to empty your trash.
Yeah, that's been bugging me as well. How much can someone really get that they didn't already know in order to search for it? XD
I've already contact Apple, the problem lies with some POP3 accounts, and should be fixed with 3.1, along with MMS finally
I have e-mails from 2008 in my spotlight.
nilay - you guys should restyle those links in the top right to something more like tabs a la Joystiq/joystiq xbox etc. that way they're more likely to be seen by the reader, and the whole image of tabs makes people feel more like they're switching between browser tabs rather than navigating away from engadget.com too a whole new website (i know that sounds like a little thing, but i really think it would make a big difference).
and i get your point about classic readers wanting to read some things, but this one really belongs on engadget mobile. of those people who own an iphone, probabably 90% of those people probably hadn't realized there was a bug and it won't affect them. it's not a big problem, most people would get along fine never knowing. i would have.
anyway, thanks for stuff.
That's why my deleted emails keep coming back and being listed as new!!
FURTHERMORE... if you open one of those previously deleted emails, delete it again, and relaunch a Spotlight search with the same keyword that brought it back in the first place... you will find this new deletion added up to the list of results!
I've seen this running both 3.0 and 3.0.1. Broke up with GF, permanently deleted all messages from her within past year server-side (gmail) and when I ran a search on the phone saw messages going back as far as 6 months. Even wonderful technology can't help me escape this girl.
It seems MobileMe does NOT have the same issue...i've tested using it and can't find the message using spotlight. at the same time in another IMAP account, it happens...
I noticed this a long time ago and I'm glad to hear it might be fixed with OS 3.1
Max should get a life
How about the bug where when you reply to an email from an Exchange account on your iPhone, it doesn't show up as replied to in your Outlook client? This has been a bug since Exchange support was added in firmware 2.0 (i.e. over a year!). Please Apple, do something about this if you want to be serious about business users! I fully realize that this post will not necessarily reach anyone at Apple; I just needed to get that off my chest.
This truly the end of the world right?!? Ok maybe not.
Yeah, lulz.
"This just in- if someone is on your unlocked iPhone or iPod touch, they can do whatever the fuçk they want"
and I hear that all machines are actually vulnerable to that one...
oh my god, has this only just been found! I spotted this the day 3.0 was released! old news...
This is a 'big' glitch? Hate much?
geniuses...
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/08/18/readers-write-the-iphone-3-0-mail-bug/
i just tried to replicate the bug using exchange support and it doesn't seem to apply in this case since it isn't using POP or IMAP. if a corporation is going to give its employees iphones, you would think that they would be using the exchange support (for those companies that have iphones and exchange) so this wouldn't apply to them as being a vulnerability.
iPhone 3G running 3.0 OS and IMAP - my deleted eMails are gone.
IT'S A BUG!!!!!
I've told engadget about this months ago, it shows e-mails that have been removed from the trash folder!
IT'S A BUG People, nothing else!
Poor Apple customers.
This is not a new and definitely not a 3.0 bug. More importantly, it is NOT fixed in 3.0.1! This bug has been around since 1.0. It is a memory issue/feature that makes snapshots and stores it in a reserved part of the memory. No iPhone/iTunes feature will allow you to erase this part of the memory. The ONLY thing that changed in 3.0 is that Spotlight was added and they forgot to exclude this part of the memory from Search. In 3.0.1 this has changed in such a fashion that this part of the memory is now excluded from Search.
In other words, emails that you've deleted (yes, permanently!) are still there and there to stay (until internal processes clear it to make room for more snapshots)! If you use memory scanning tools that are out there (not from Apple) you'll find alot more that you might not want to find.
One word of advice: if you ever sell your iPhone or for that matter, bring it in to Apple for repair, you'd better use one of those tools to scan and truly delete the stuff that you don't want other people to find...
My problem is that if emails have attachments, these are also kept as part of the email in Spotlight search AFTER you have deleted them from your inbox AND the trash. If (like me) people are sending you lots of attachements in the form of high res photos for example, these are kept on the device. My device memory in iTunes is being eaten up very quickly by the "other" catagory of memory usage (orange bar). There seems to be no way I can delete these emails and attachments completely. One day soon I guess my memory will just get used up. This needs to be fixed quickly!