Do Not Lie to Users

Multiple people working on Outlook.com thought this was a reasonable design.

After a user deletes an email, then manually goes into the Deleted Items folder, then clicks Delete again, then acknowledges that they wish to Permanently Delete the deleted item:

… the item is still not deleted. You can “Recover deleted items” from your Deleted items folder:

… and voila, they’re all hiding out there:

Further, if you click the Purge button, you’ll find that it doesn’t actually do anything.

The poor user is expected to:

1. Be aware of this insane behavior
2. Individually check a box next to each unwanted message, then click Purge.

Microsoft’s design is offensively anti-privacy.

-Eric

PS: This sums it up pretty well.