Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#51

Post by kkfx » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 6:29 PM UTC

I use fetchmail, I've used OfflineIMAP before and MailDrop locally to autorefile anything since I use my mails locally (notmuch-emacs), in the past I've used OfflineIMAP also to restore mails on a third party IMAPs.

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).

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#52

Post by aborsy » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 6:32 PM UTC

subsection1h wrote: post #45

Seeing people in this thread say that they delete all their emails is super weird. I'd like to know their job titles, ages, etc. Do they not use email to converse with their lawyers, business associates, etc.?

I can’t delete or encrypt emails for the same reason. It’s a legal document, though I don’t know how it’s treated by the courts. Definitely it’s evidence.

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#53

Post by aborsy » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

What is the best format for email back up, so that it can be read decades in the future?

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#54

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 6:45 PM UTC

not_your_vase wrote: post #7

No. Yolo. (Also, in the past 20 years I never needed to find any personal email that's older than a week, so I'm not terribly concerned about the effect of dataloss.)

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#55

Post by quintes » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

Get locked out of your account? Hope you had a backup. I lost access to an account can’t get back in.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#56

Post by skydhash » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 7:02 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #12

LinuxBender wrote: post #10

Do you backup your Emails? 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.

Can you search through old emails easily?

I can probably 'rgrep' my Archives folder (I'm using the maildir format, each email a text file).

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#57

Post by skydhash » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 7:09 PM UTC

I'm using fastmail, but mostly for the reputation. I have a cron script that fetches mail every 5 minutes locally with mbsync (I view them with notmuch and emacs). Backup is done alongside my other files.

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#58

Post by Rotundo » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 7:54 PM UTC

subsection1h wrote: post #45

Seeing people in this thread say that they delete all their emails is super weird. I'd like to know their job titles, ages, etc. Do they not use email to converse with their lawyers, business associates, etc.?

Email is not secure and therefore not suitable for serious business use. Even if you encrypt your message in transit (which is hard when mailing third parties), your stored message is one missed security patch away from snooping eyes.

Email is for casual use only.

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#59

Post by elseleigh » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 8:31 PM UTC

I have email going back more than 25 years from various software; in most cases an export dump when I stopped using, say, Pegasus Mail or Eudora. Since I started with Thunderbird I've created a new profile each year, and have profiles going back to 2008.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

#60

Post by madphilosopher » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 8:44 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #27

I use Thunderbird and just back up my home directory.

I was doing this. But then I started noticing that some emails I had read were not being stored locally in the Thunderbird IMAP folder structure on my computer, even though Thunderbird had fetched them and shown them to me. I couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason to this, so I started using mbsync on the commandline to properly mirror my IMAP account to a local store that then gets backed up with my home directory.