Show HN: Discovered a bug in gmail

4 points19eightyfour2 comments

Zombie messages.

1. Open GMail.

2. Write a mail to yourself. Send it.

3. After it arrives immediately select it and delete it.

4. After that immediately go to trash and empty trash forever.

5. After that immediately close tab.

6. Now open a new tab and go to GMail again. See the message you apparently just deleted in your email box. Creepy zombie message!

Can anyone else reproduce?

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Seems reasonable: Gmail's Javascript makes the message appear immediately because it knows it will appear there. You delete it, but that command has no effect because the real email message is still being relayed to Gmail's mail servers and getting redirected to yourself, but nonetheless the message vanishes from the UI. Then it arrives.

I'll not try to reproduce. This is not a bug.

Are you sure this is a bug or is it just that you are closing stuff before the AJAX/whatever request goes through? Do you have low latency to GMail's servers? Just an idea.

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