my kid—a programmer—has had those problems too. if you’re curious, check out the threads on gmail’s help section. i also read a blogger who posted about the same thing, and it was also reported several months ago (possibly in the uk guardian register? something like that) that an english university was/is having random mail “eaten” (trashed) by gmail. it’s easily googlable. i first noticed this around february and at first thought it was my iphone being wonky. i didn’t find any mentions of it earlier than just this winter, so i’m thinking it’s fairly recent.
had i not kept having to delete old messeages i did trash—just yesterday, suddenly i had to redelete several hundred messages dating as far back as march!—i’m not sure how long it would have taken me to catch the other problem. but as i was re-deleting some stuff earlier this week, i noticed there was a message i most definitely had saved. i pulled it out, and the next day saving stuff was very careful to not accidently put something in trash by mistake. next day i checked in my trash and: two messages i know i archived were indeed in the trash. which led me to gmail help section (no reply by anyone yet to these threads and they’re not listed as “known issues.”). later when i ran it by erin (my son) he was nodding his head, and said, “yes, i know. i don’t use gmail for work.” and my son, btw, is one of those digital packrats who never deletes a mail. me? every day i clean house. both ends of the spectrum.