Also I don't necessarily trust some of my email providers (nor my self hosted one) and soonish have to clear one out because I run out of storage.
So what tools are you using to backup your emails? Is there a service which takes care of this automatically?
If it's possible to give any detail without giving too much, I'm curious what the nature of the situation was and what the saving document was?
On the flip side, when a company refuses to acknowledge things like arbitration opt-outs that comply with the requirements articulated in the ToS (you know who you are), I email myself a copy of the Exchange trace report showing that the server never recorded a reply. I’m also usually open that I’m doing that, too.
Generally speaking records are an asset not a liability, unless you’re up to something shady. Generally.
I have almost every email of my life, so it's easy to find them.
Address books and calendars for random gmail accounts get synced by vdirsyncer to both local storage and also to other backup gmail accounts.
It works well, and I don't have to worry about e.g., Google permanently locking me out of one of these accounts, without recourse.
* Both offlineimap and vdirsyncer are in Debian's repos. But, I had to pin/install vdirsyncer from testing to get working oath support for gmail (it did not pull in any dependencies from testing that were concerning [I don't recall if it pulled in anything at all, but I would not have installed from testing if it pulled in anything concerning]).
Meanwhile, my desktop e-mail client (Thunderbird) has its own local files which are captured by a consumer online-backup solution (e.g. Backblaze) along with other documents, photos, etc. That means both local-copies of server mail, and also items which have been perma-downloaded into mailboxes and purged from the server.
In a way, my biggest worry is not backup-coverage of the bytes per se, but potential archeological issues when it comes to arcane mailbox formats. (My second-biggest worry is that my organization is terrible and Inbox keeps growing.)
I use neomutt to access my archive over SSH. And notmuch is very fast at searching all of my emails.
* https://github.com/gauteh/lieer
* https://github.com/elizagamedev/mujmap
* https://notmuchmail.org/
I save important official docs from my mail — I even sometimes export eml files to those archive/backup folders. So all those get backed up.
The emails themselves? Not really — even though the mail folder (Thunderbird’s; not Mail.app’s — can’t trust an Apple made utility app to be part of even a half hearted backup process) is actually part my backup routine as part of one of those 3 backup tools running on my system (and 2 sync tools). But I seriously doubt I am going to find an email from a backup snapshot ever. But if I must I have that.
But I would want to — have wanted to. Maybe a dedicated tool that downloads every single mail and keeps it synced with the server in an email file format that’s most efficient for backup and querying that backup later. Or maybe tweak around Thunderbird that makes that happen.
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention — I immediately delete those official mails (like statements, bills) immediately after saving those PDFs if I have to. I think I delete 99% of email I receive (okay maybe 80-90% - not sure; you get the idea). Only personal emails are what I never delete. So I never have too much email to begin with. I do the same with photos and videos and screenshots taken - if it can be detected, it will be deleted.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/maildir-thunderbird
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Maildir
Note: Thunderbird lacks full support for maildir. This is the reason why I switched from Thunderbird to mu4e (an Emacs-based mail client) years ago. Though, some Thunderbird users say they've been using Thunderbird with maildir for years without issues.
If an email contains something I need to keep, it is transferred to my proper files.
Empty mail, happy life.
I don’t keep letters in my mailbox. I don’t see why i should keep emails either.
I cannot achieve this with my letter box.
That assumes large volumes of important mail. Even without that though, an email inbox is a natural and “first class” place to store an email, whereas a letter box is not designed to be effective at any sort of reliable storage.
To be calm that if all email is lost - it’s not a big deal.
I find the idea of backing up whole email life silly.
You don’t back up your physical post from beginning of ages, right? You rather keep only small fraction of most valuable things while dumping once in a while all temporarily important stuff.
Email is not a goal for me, just a mean to an end.
I view old emails as all of the browser tabs I have open right now: I feel attached to them and avoid closing them. But if they all disappear I'll be fine. I'm not wasting energy backing them up.
Yes. I have a combination of self hosted email and a vendor email provider. I access both with IMAPS. I pull down the emails with Thunderbird and never leave them on the server. I back up the local Thunderbird data folder locally then back it up to multiple encrypted SSD/NVME.
Earlier this year I imported all this historical data into the Mail Server on our Synology NAS. I don't use this server for current mail, but I can now search these old messages easily from within Thunderbird.
One thing I notice is how much more personal email there was before we started using chat services for group conversations. Nonetheless it's great being able to go back and read correspondence with, say, my dad who died in 2010.
This thread suggests that there are many who view email as something to curate in the same way you would a letter box or a physical office inbox.
I find it more freeing to disregard whether I’m saving dust. I can purge that dust en masse any time I want without having to stay on top of it. The other side of that is that I can also locate anything important from one place with just two pieces of information, one of them being “it was an email”.
The whole process only takes about 5 minutes once every week or two. It gives me easy access to over 20 years of email which is nice to have even though I only search the old ones a few times a year.
Thunderbird is a great way to back up emails. You can tell it to store everything locally. It stores everything in handy sqlite tables under the covers.
Can’t get into your mail cuz of internet issues. Hope you had a backup
Too much space used? Make a backup, cleanup and continue
Thunderbird and Mail service exports for me.
Ideally something that runs against a local archive on PC, and has a mobile app. With instant results.
I used to use Lookout (for Outlook) and have never managed to find something as fast, simple and reliable.
Email is for casual use only.
Also I never had a lawyer or an associate, I only have friends.
I’ve never heard this argument before. It’s routine in many regulated industries with de facto or legally required preservation mandates to encrypt email, often with S/MIME or sometimes something proprietary.
31 GB written and still going strong.
Essentially they are just a set of maildirs on my homeserver backed up with the rest, muchsync over SSH allow to have messages on multiple computers (actually just desktop and laptop).
That being said, I started using email about twenty years ago and I probably have looked at past emails maybe a dozen times. The vast majority I never look at again.
Whenever I change jobs I always take a copy of all my emails and keep it in offline storage.
Arguably not always legal/compliant. But both for CYA, learned history, relevant contacts etc. it has had use for me in multiple occasions in the past
> what tools are you using to backup your emails?
rsync and btrfs snapshots
> Is there a service which takes care of this automatically?
Cron?