Manage Email Expiration Dates in SquirelMail

Jonathan Loriaux — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 12:15:07 -0000

Introduction

When receiving marketing emails, I want to be able to identify messages with expiration dates, especially those that have already expired, in order to effectively declutter my inbox and actively contribute to reducing the ecological impact associated with storing these expired messages.

Problem and Context

The "Email Expiration Date" project aims to reduce the environmental impact of commercial emails by facilitating the deletion of outdated messages. Currently, email clients lack integrated tools to effectively manage the deletion of emails sent by advertisers who have set an expiration date. Implementing this feature in email clients would provide users with effective cleanup tools based on email expiration dates.

For more information about the project and the proposed standard, please refer to:

"Email Expiration Date" project site: https://www.zerocarbon.email/
Internet standard draft published at the IETF: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mailmaint-expires/

User Benefits

Integrating this feature would allow users to more easily clean up their inboxes by automatically deleting expired messages they are unlikely to read. With just one or two clicks, they could remove hundreds of unnecessary messages, improving email management efficiency and contributing to the reduction of the carbon footprint associated with email storage (see Ressources section).

Implementation Proposal

We are considering several options for implementing this feature:

Search Option: Add a search option to find all expired messages in an email inbox. Users can then simply delete the messages if they wish.
Virtual Folder/Tab: Create a virtual folder (or tab) listing all expired emails, offering the user the option to delete them with a single click.
Expired Message Alert: Display an alert whenever more than xx expired messages are present in the email inbox, offering the user the option to delete them with a single click.
Automatic Deletion: Allow the email client to automatically delete expired emails from a given sender from a displayed email. In this case, it is essential to obtain the user's explicit consent so that no emails are deleted without their authorization.
Preference Center : Show the complete list of bulk email senders to the user. In this list, they can enable or disable automatic email deletion according to their preferences (and unsubscribe via List-Unsubscribe).

What we propose not to do:

Individual expiration notifications: It is not recommended to create individual alert messages for each expired message. In addition to generating too many alerts, some spammers (and marketers) could take advantage of this to generate notifications using expiration dates.

Options and Settings

To ensure this feature is flexible and respectful of user preferences, the following options should be available:

The ability to prevent the email client from deleting emails from certain senders via a list of senders not to be deleted.
An option to add a sender to this list from the email reading screen.
The ability to disable cleanup tools based on expiration dates, although the feature should ideally be enabled by default for any new installation of the email client or after the update adding this feature.

Challenges and Considerations

It is crucial that this feature be discussed within the community to anticipate and address potential challenges. For example, measures must be taken to prevent the malicious use of expiration dates, such as dates set before the email is sent or just a few hours after sending. The user must always remain in control of deleting emails in their inbox.

Priority

Given the climate emergency and the importance of reducing the environmental impact of technology, we request that this feature be considered a high priority. Every technology must adapt to minimize its environmental impact.

Usage and Adoption

Currently, only a small number of mass emails have an expiration date. According to a study by Orange in France, as of May 2024, about 5% of emails have an expiration date (source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonathanloriaux_orange-email-expiration-date-activity-7211730790152306689-AscM).

This is mainly due to the difficulty of enforcing an evolution of an internet standard. Although mass senders are very interested in deploying expiration dates in their emails, few sending platforms allow the addition of SMTP “Expires:” headers, and no major Mailbox Provider has implemented the technology.

Therefore, it is essential that the entire ecosystem (mass senders, mass email sending solutions, and email clients) advances to make this project a reality.

Wireframes

These wireframes are examples of what the functionality could look like in existing email clients. We will progressively add more examples.

Search Field

See attachments

Virtual Folder/Tab

See attachments

Additional Comments

Expiration dates in emails are mainly intended for mass emails. At this stage, it does not seem relevant to allow an email client user to set an expiration date for emails they send.

Ressources

The IETF Standard Draft : https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mailmaint-expires/
List of companies (Brands, ESPs, MBPs) supporting the project : https://www.zerocarbon.email/
Study on the carbon footprint of obsolete emails: https://splio.tech/carbon-footprint-of-decaying-emails-26b253aad4a7
List of email service providers implementations : https://www.zerocarbon.email/documentation/list-esps/

#583 Nightly snapshots verification

Eduardo Reyes — Wed, 25 May 2022 16:29:34 -0000

Thanks for addressing this issue.

#583 Nightly snapshots verification

Paul Lesniewski — Wed, 25 May 2022 16:01:51 -0000

status: open --> closed-fixed
assigned_to: Paul Lesniewski

#554 Multiple attachments

Paul Lesniewski — Sun, 22 May 2022 20:36:27 -0000

assigned_to: Paul Lesniewski
Group: --> After Templates

#554 Multiple attachments

Paul Lesniewski — Sun, 22 May 2022 20:36:13 -0000

There is a plugin called "Multiple Attachments" that allows adding more than one file at a time (per page request), but the actual file dialog selection is still one at a time -- changing that would be more involved and may or may not be worth the effort.

#551 Mark As Read _and_ Delete

Paul Lesniewski — Sun, 22 May 2022 20:13:28 -0000

status: open --> closed-fixed
assigned_to: Jonathan Angliss --> Paul Lesniewski
Group: --> After Templates

#541 Delivering attached files through http

Paul Lesniewski — Sun, 22 May 2022 19:44:04 -0000

status: closed-wont-fix --> open-wont-fix

#541 Delivering attached files through http

Paul Lesniewski — Sun, 22 May 2022 19:43:09 -0000

status: open --> closed-wont-fix
assigned_to: Paul Lesniewski
Group: --> After Templates

#543 Inline Message Preview

Paul Lesniewski — Sun, 22 May 2022 19:41:14 -0000

status: open --> closed-fixed
assigned_to: Paul Lesniewski
Group: --> After Templates

#565 Use different HTML s on different pages</h1> <p>Paul Lesniewski — Sun, 22 May 2022 00:53:28 -0000</p> <div class="markdown_content"><ul> <li><strong>status</strong>: open --> pending</li> <li><strong>Group</strong>: --> After Templates</li> </ul></div> </article> </main></body></html>

Recent changes to feature-requests

Manage Email Expiration Dates in SquirelMail

Introduction

Problem and Context

User Benefits

Implementation Proposal

Options and Settings

Challenges and Considerations

Priority

Usage and Adoption

Wireframes

Search Field

Virtual Folder/Tab

Additional Comments

Ressources

#583 Nightly snapshots verification

#583 Nightly snapshots verification

#554 Multiple attachments

#554 Multiple attachments

#551 Mark As Read _and_ Delete

#541 Delivering attached files through http

#541 Delivering attached files through http

#543 Inline Message Preview

#565 Use different HTML s on different pages</h1> <p>Paul Lesniewski — Sun, 22 May 2022 00:53:28 -0000</p> <div class="markdown_content"><ul> <li><strong>status</strong>: open --> pending</li> <li><strong>Group</strong>: --> After Templates</li> </ul></div> </article> </main></body></html>