Slight change to compressed e-mail filenames

This post describes a small technical change to the way e-mail is stored on our servers. The change is unlikely to affect anyone and does not affect normal e-mail access at all — we’re documenting it just in case any customer is doing something very unusual.

Last year, we started compressing some stored mail on our servers, and our page about mail storage mentioned that compressed mail files would have a capital “Z” in the filename.

Our servers now compress all new mail, and as a side-effect of that change, compressed files won’t always have the “Z” in the filename. The page has been updated to reflect that.

As it says, we never recommend accessing the raw mail storage files anyway: All mail access should always be done through standard SMTP, POP or IMAP protocols. Doing things that way will ensure that changes the mail storage format won’t affect you.