Unwanted folders appeared today

[benbullard79]

I have multiple e-mail accounts with same ISP. On one of the accounts today in Thunderbird I suddenly have unwanted 'Sent Mail' and 'Spam' in addition to the existing 'Sent' and 'Junk' folders. Any idea what would cause this? How can I delete the unwanted folders?
The 'Sent Mail' folder has no option to delete it in right click context menu, the 'Spam' one does but it returns next time Thunderbird is opened.

Also it is concerning that this has happened to one account out of 4 with same ISP. The fact that they are involving sent and spam makes me wonder if a corrupt e-mail has done something malicious. FWIW this is a Linux computer running either OpenMandriva or openSUSE.

[tanstaafl]

Are you using a IMAP account? Those could be the folders your email provider uses for the sent folder and junk folder. Thunderbird defaults to different folders for the same purpose. You could either change the default folders to what your email provider uses using "copies & folders" and "junk settings" in the accounts settings or unsubscribe the unwanted folders. Right click on the remote inbox in the folder pane, select "Subscribe", expand the folder listing, uncheck the unwanted folders and press the OK button. That just hides the folders from Thunderbird, it does not delete them. I assume "only show subscribed folders" is checked in "advanced settings" in the accounts server settings.

Its not clear what changed, but this doesn't sound like a problem due to malware.

[benbullard79]

Thanks for the reply tanstaafl. I found that folder subscriptions forces me to use the 2 new folders as it won't unsubscribe the newly created ones only the old ones.

So this looks like something my ISP (Cox Communications) is doing. But why oh why? And why to only one of 4 e-mail accounts? Plus this is going to raise havoc with peoples e-mail clients for those of us that use clients. I can see this for new accounts but not existing accounts.

I will post this on the Cox Internet forum and see what's up and if it is in fact something they have changed.

[benbullard79]

Oh, I forgot, yes these are IMAP accounts. Or at least that's how I set them up in Thunderbird.

[tanstaafl]

Normally the only reason you can't unsubscribe a folder is because its a special folder such as the inbox, or the folder is specified in one of the accounts settings such as the designated trash, sent, archive, templates, or junk folders. I don't remember whether there is also a problem if the folder is designated a offline folder in "synchronization & storage".

I suspect you just need to change the designated junk and sent folders before unsubscribing the unwanted version of those folders. My fastmail.fm IMAP account uses sent items rather than sent, and junk mail rather than junk. Gmail uses sent mail rather than sent, and spam rather than junk.