I would suspect a large amount of what has happened was an automated system designed to prevent the servers hard drives running out of space.
It wouldn't of read the content of the e-mails.
It's probably a system that was setup when plusnet first became an isp and hasn't been fettled with much since and has been shown it needs to move with the times a bit. For example sending the e-mails to all accounts listed.
I don't know the exact systems plusnet use as I haven't been with them again for long (was a customer 03-06 though) my comments relate back to what happens with other providers when you hit a full mail box.
A GB of e-mail is quite a lot of mail, in the 8 years that i've been using g-mail I have over 10,000 threads of mail (they re: conversations) with a lot of attachments and i'm using 1.1GB of 10.1GB. Webmail providers haven't offered endless storage for all that long, it was only when google put the cat among the pigeons with g-mail that sizes went through the roof. Hotmail / Yahoo et all used to provide you with 5!MB of storage and would change a significant amount if you wanted more space like 25megs!
If 1GB is there 'fair use' amount and you had been exceeding it for at least 30 days I would consider that as 'full' irrespective of how often you were downloading them a copy was staying on there servers. A line has to be drawn arbitarly somewhere.
As for your current predicament I would suggest the following changes, most of which the mods here should be able to do for you.
- Set your plusnet e-mail to automatically forward on any new mail to another providor (say yahoo) so that everything gets backed up automatically (I think you can set this up in webmail but a mod could do it)
- Have all your current stored e-mail forwarded on to this backup address (again mod should be able to do this for you)
- Set your mail client to recieve plusnet e-mail via pop3 this way it's downloaded onto your laptop and not stored remotely
- Setup your mail client to check the backup account via imap (gmail and yahoo support outlook via imap i believe) this way the backup e-mail remains on a server somewhere and as long as the client keeps logging in it wont get deleted.
This way should mean if something went wrong with your laptop or you accidentally deleted an important e-mail it would all still be there.
Like energy suppliers though it is a bit naughty of them to keep you on a higher price package when they offer new customers the same or more for less!
