

Ask HN: Do you backup your email? - Skywing

Just curious if anyone out there uses any method of backing up their email. I'm sure most people, especially on gmail or other hosted providers, just simply move the emails that they wish to preserve into some other folder or just never delete them from the inbox. But, do any of you make an effort to back them up using other methods?<p>I'm interested because I've been working on a weekend project that does email storage. I'm curious what the interest in something like this might be. And, if you are one of those people that just never delete email that you want to preserve, what things might persuade you to use another method of backing them up?<p>Thanks!
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staunch
I use pop3 to download all my email from Gmail (and Google Apps) to my local
disk. Then I tar it, gpg it, and send off to S3.

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matdwyer
I use a similar method - I take my Gmail & download it about once per month
with Mail.app using Pop3. I just leave it local though, I'm fairly confident
in both Googles servers & my local disk.

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veb
My email address was disabled by my ex-employer, which was then accessed
(possibly by changing the password?) and my details were then tampered with.
Example: I had about 5 domain names in a Namecheap account, the ex-employer
then did the 'forgot password'. It happened for a few other services. But the
worst was seeing parts of my medical files leaked on some IRC server.

Now I'm not quite sure what to do in regards to email. The whole ordeal made
me quite sick in the stomach. I have my (new email) settings set so that all
emails are deleted after request (on the server) - it's probably a crap way
but I didn't know any other option. So I'd expect anything that backs up my
email to be -hardcore- on security...

It did make me realise how much malicious damage that can be done if someone
gets access to your email, and the importance of keeping work / personal
emails separate. :-(

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Skywing
Ouch! Well, that's some good information for me to digest. It's clear that
security is the major issue here. I'm looking into PGP and how to effectively
do it for individual users.

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scorpioxy
Not backup in the true sense of the word, but i do keep duplicate copies. I
have a domain account and a gmail account and i keep them in sync.

I'd like to also have a local copy(which would be backuped along with the rest
of my data), but i have yet to do that.

A bit paranoid, but I've dealt with data loss before. It wasn't pretty.

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iuguy
I have lots of different mail accounts, some backed up, some not. Anything
important in an email I save on Evernote. Anything sensitive in an email I
save locally, or encrypt with either Password Gorilla (which I really need to
migrate from) or PGP Desktop.

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donohoe
Yes - I have e-mail from my main account fwd'd to Gmail and a Rule set up to
Archive it immediately and add a Tag.

So I get a backup plus an easily accessible way to access it from the outside.

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Skywing
Is there anything in particular about your method that you wish were easier,
better or different? Is there anything that does not exist, or does exist that
you feel shouldn't have to?

Thanks!

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WoodsyDotOrg
Hosted delivery box > exim local box > outlook on windows > pst saved on raid6
box with 7day snapshot, 4week snapshot and 6month snapshot > crashplan net
backup with versioning

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olalonde
I trust Google to keep my e-mail safe!

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kgutteridge
backup from Google about once a month, this then is included in my normal
system backup regime which verges on the slightly paranoid!

