A reader asks: “Are my old, deleted Yahoo e-mails stored somewhere on the hard drive? Can I recover them?”

Maybe — but probably not. It depends on how you set things up.

Most web/cloud-based email services (not just Yahoo) live almost entirely on their host servers, not on your PC.

In a typical default setup, your browser accesses your web/cloud-based email and displays it locally (on your PC); but at most, only temporary scratchpad copies are saved locally, while you’re reading the email. The actual email files, including attachments and your replies, remain on the distant server. And when you close your browser or run a cleanup app, the local, temporary copies are deleted. The copies on the server remain until you delete them through the email interface, or cancel your account.

However, if you didn’t use a default, web-based email setup, then you might have local copies.

But you’d probably already know, because you would have had to take extra steps to make it happen.

For example, when you set up your Yahoo mail, did you convert the default account to use a non-browser-based email client via IMAP or POP? (See also: Yahoo IMAP instructions; Yahoo POP instructions) Did you select, install, and configure a different different email client; and also told that email client to store your emails on your local system?

Those things are unusual enough that you’d probably remember doing them. And you probably would have encountered some large mailbox folders on your PC.

But if all this sounds unfamiliar to you, then odds are you had a pretty basic, non-POP, non-IMAP, browser/web-based email account, with nothing of significance permanently saved on your local system.

Sorry!

(P.S. If you ask, Yahoo will try to recover emails that were deleted within the last 7 days. (Yahoo email recovery page.) But you specified “old” emails, so I’m guessing this isn’t an option. Again, sorry!)

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