Paul Cartwright put forth on 11/12/2010 9:13 AM:
Yesterday I was reading inbpox mail, deleted a few junks, etc, and suspended my laptop.
This may come as a shock or surprise to you Paul, but you should never suspend a laptop while you have a network socket open to a remote host, especially if it's an encrypted (SSL) connection. Always log out first.
Given the problem you describe, I'd suggest closing your browser, launching it again, connect to your SM page, and login again. If that doesn't fix the problem, clear your browser cache. If that still doesn't solve your problem, reboot the laptop. If that still doesn't solve your problem, check the server logs when you get home.
Unless someone sniffed your credentials (unlikely) and logged in to your now open IMAP 143 port and deleted all you mail, then it should still be there.
BTW, why did you punch a hole through the router for TCP 143? That's not needed for webmail access (SM). Opening TCP 143 (better would be 993) is only needed if you want to connect Thunderbird directly to Dovecot while at a remote location. And as I said, you should only use an encrypted connection for this (TCP 993 with IMAPS).
-- Stan