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These backups could be local or remote backups better be local AND remote.
Why? I don’t see how that is better than two or three remote backups? Do I need to change my strategy?
And a related PSA: never use "login with Google" or the like. You're exposing yourself to a severe cascade risk for the sake of saving a a little time. And your email should be on your own domain.
Underrated comments, right here. I use login with Google for nonessential things, and own my email domains.
The only things I'd add are that you should own both your email domain and the domain for your recovery email, AND that you should be backup files and photos to another service/location.
This is the 6th month that I lost access to my gmail account because I forgot my password (I was forced to change it prior to that, and I changed my devices). I lost access to many services from McDonald reward program to bank account (which I can recover I think). I just think it is such a bad idea to use email for accounts. I have migrated to iCloud email because it has a reasonable recovery process I can trust. I…
I've said it once, and I've said it again for well over a decade. The only google account recovery is creating a new account in 5 minutes. If doing that does not restore the full extent of the purpose for which you were using google's services, you're doing it wrong. Google accounts serve one purpose: if you are trying to use a google resource that requires an account. Example: save some marked places on google maps.…
what do you suggest for cloud storage? I've had better luck over the years with google drive to store my documents than a physical backup drive. But the thought of losing access to my account scares me
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Why? I don’t see how that is better than two or three remote backups? Do I need to change my strategy?
egress charges if you have a lot of data.
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If it is just email, it is more ergonomic to setup a local POP client like Thunderbird to download the emails. You don't have to use it to send email, just configure once and bring it up regularly to fetch the emails. I have a full copy of my gmail mailbox this way (already moved banking/govt services to fastmail anyway).
Yeah, this is what I do for email as well. Lets you seamlessly transition your backup to another service if/when you stop using gmail too. Though I use imap rather than pop, so that I don't end up with duplicates or other weirdness. (I keep incremental backups of the drive where the email is stored, so I'm not worried about a situation where both the cloud and backup copies get wiped.)
POP3 is good for use cases where you're rapidly migrating out and you want to wipe the messages clean, server-side. Or, if you believe the server will play hijinks with your messages or folders in some way, POP3 will give you a snapshot from time of download.
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egress charges if you have a lot of data.
depends on where you host your data. a decent provider will include a few terabytes of traffic per month. and since you won't have a lot of people accessing that data, your traffic won't exceed that of a moderately popular website.
Example: my work places all our files, including your docs and desktop folder, on OneDrive. There is a local cache, but they don't actually let you do a full sync to local to minimize egress
Example: they replaced my laptop, I had about a TB of data generated on the old one. It's all in OneDrive. I power up the new laptop. I can't just sync everything to it - they disable that via policy. Every time I open something for the first time, it downloads. So if I wanted to say, copy all my crap to AWS. Now I have to Egress the whole thing from Azure.
Now, imagine you have more than a TB. Not arguing either way - just answering the question.
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Part of the issue is the account is not dead, in the way many people think. Once you are locked out, after a period of time, Google can do what it wants with it. Which may include looking over or extracting any data from it, then selling it to whoever they like. And where those other entities may be storing your information (or continuously updating a profile about you), for their purposes and however long they like.…
Do you have a citation?
It's data on their servers that they control, that no longer has a user. The data then can fall into any of the categories mentioned above, to include the possibility of transfer to 3rd party entities. That they may eventually delete it, is different from how they may have used it or to what entities they may have sent portions to.
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Gmail is not free. You may not be paying for it with cash money, but you are paying for it with your privacy, and you’d better believe they profit from having your data.
Exactly. And Google is very quick to kill free products that are not generating good revenue for them.