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I’m curious about why you’re backing up your email from cloud providers? Presumably their storage will be more durable than yours. I saw one person mention usi

I’m curious about why you’re backing up your email from cloud providers? Presumably their storage will be more durable than yours. I saw one person mention using it to help migrate to another system. What other reasons do you have?

rob_c 5y ago
Can't speak for author but I use mbsync to keep an old Gmail account but self host the emails from my own server where everything is encrypted at rest. It syncing the emails to one place allows me to manage the 6 accounts most of which are work related through the one dovecot/roundcube interface.
londons_explore 5y ago
Moving email from one account to another. Freeing up space in the 'online' store by copying everything with attachments over 6 years old to your machine and deleting it. keeping a copy for offline access keeping a copy incase the provider blocks your account for some reason. Modifying stuff in some way the UI won't let you do (for example modifying emails in the inbox)
detaro 5y ago
> Presumably their storage will be more durable than yours. Backup storage doesn't necessarily need to be more durable than the thing it's backing up, as long as it has different failure causes. (also, "my storage" or a replica of it could easily be rented from a different cloud provider, but generally, if a single event impacts my home storage and my email provider at the same time, I likely have other worries) > What other reasons do you have? Companies temporarily or permanently suspend users for a long list of reasons, often without warning. Companies are not safe from bugs or outages. Accounts can get hacked even if you're careful. E-Mail is extremely important and at the same time usually a small amount of data, so easy to back up.
dddddaviddddd 5y ago
I back up my Gmail in case I'm one day shadow banned for a supposed, obscure violation of the terms of service. Usually there's no recourse in those situations. (I use getmail for this.)
- SquareWheel 5y ago
  If it's a shadow ban, then everything would look normal for you when logged in, wouldn't it? I'd be more concerned about a regular ban where you may lose access to your content altogether.
  - dddddaviddddd 5y ago
    You're right, I was thinking of a regular ban / account lock out.
indymike 5y ago
Accounts can be canceled. Payments can be missed.
gogopuppygogo 5y ago
Cloud email providers like Google and Microsoft offer replication but not backups. It's always good practice to have a backup.

rob_c 5y ago

Can't speak for author but I use mbsync to keep an old Gmail account but self host the emails from my own server where everything is encrypted at rest. It syncing the emails to one place allows me to manage the 6 accounts most of which are work related through the one dovecot/roundcube interface.

londons_explore 5y ago

Moving email from one account to another. Freeing up space in the 'online' store by copying everything with attachments over 6 years old to your machine and deleting it. keeping a copy for offline access keeping a copy incase the provider blocks your account for some reason. Modifying stuff in some way the UI won't let you do (for example modifying emails in the inbox)

detaro 5y ago

> Presumably their storage will be more durable than yours. Backup storage doesn't necessarily need to be more durable than the thing it's backing up, as long as it has different failure causes. (also, "my storage" or a replica of it could easily be rented from a different cloud provider, but generally, if a single event impacts my home storage and my email provider at the same time, I likely have other worries) > What other reasons do you have? Companies temporarily or permanently suspend users for a long list of reasons, often without warning. Companies are not safe from bugs or outages. Accounts can get hacked even if you're careful. E-Mail is extremely important and at the same time usually a small amount of data, so easy to back up.

dddddaviddddd 5y ago

I back up my Gmail in case I'm one day shadow banned for a supposed, obscure violation of the terms of service. Usually there's no recourse in those situations. (I use getmail for this.)

SquareWheel 5y ago
If it's a shadow ban, then everything would look normal for you when logged in, wouldn't it? I'd be more concerned about a regular ban where you may lose access to your content altogether.
- dddddaviddddd 5y ago
  You're right, I was thinking of a regular ban / account lock out.

indymike 5y ago

Accounts can be canceled. Payments can be missed.

gogopuppygogo 5y ago

Cloud email providers like Google and Microsoft offer replication but not backups. It's always good practice to have a backup.