- email lives on a server - Gmail is the user interface for engaging with your emails - when you delete an email, you remove it from the UI/Gmail platform, but not from the server
Am I thinking of this correctly? Is a platform like Gmail more of a way to curate your experience of what is permanently /semipermanently(?) kept on the server?
Gmail's UI doesn't do the actual deleting of email, it just instructs the email server to delete it.
However, I have no idea how the email servers behind that are actually configured. I wouldn't be surprised if emails are actually just hidden or archived but they'll "look" like they've been deleted.
Hope this helps.
Most deletions move it to a Trash folder either via the UI or IMAP and eventually the trash is emptied.
But even after that the server may have access to the email for some period of time for undelete/restore.
And of course any backups.
Some metadata about emails may also be stored permanently out of the email system.
There is no guarantee that an email service provider deletes all copies of an email when you press 'delete' on the email, but most likely after a while the email will not be recoverable.
It _really_ depends on so many things.