111–120 of 173 posts
OK, my archive is being collected as of now. It was so easy, with a direct link to the takeout, with Gmail preselected, and a one click operation - I almost wonder what the catch is :) I suspect it might have been a bit of a battle to push this through the top management. Anyhow, whoever did this - thank you.
Thank you, Google. Glad to hear that the Data Liberation Front is alive and well: http://www.dataliberation.org/ From 2006: "We would never trap user data," he [Schmidt] said. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-we-wou...
"We would never trap user data" No, we just use a different definition of "user data" than most privacy and civil rights laws. Or can I soon expect to be able to download all the data anything from Google+ buttons, YouTube to Doubleclick ads have gathered on me?
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I have ambivalent feelings about this. All in all, this is my stuff.
To play devil's advocate - you willingly gave it to them, with almost zero contractual expectations. In a technical sense it is their stuff, and they have graciously implemented a feature allowing you to retrieve a copy of it. I definitely agree that it's the "right" thing to do, but this kind of comment speaks of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility. They're offering a service, they don't have any inheren…
So in other words, it really is your stuff. Imagine if they locked your accounts from you out of malice - it's legal gray area, since I don't believe there have been any court cases, but I'm pretty sure the result would be obvious. You would easily be able to sue them to get back your access to it.
Is it just me or does anyone else think that Google is possibly thinking of dropping Gmail service as well? Think Google Reader.
I do suspect though that gmail's pop3/imap will go the way of the xmpp.
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An alternative to this would be fetchmail and maildrop. The MTA (fetchmail) downloads the messages periodically and delivers them to the MDA (maildrop) which can store them in Maildir format (each mail is an individual file). Fetchmail actually has weird bugs with some mails, so I made my own version in Perl, but there's other options out there. Alternatives: http://imapsync.lamiral.info/ http://offlineimap.org/ http…
Please don't use fetchmail -- it loses data. Use offlineimap or mbsync instead.
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mbox can't be implemented properly, it is an inherently broken format. Or rather, a family of almost compatible broken formats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox Sounds like Mail.app exported in mboxcl2, which breaks mail readers expecting the mboxo or the mboxrd formats. I recommend people to use IMAP for extracting the mail, and to store it in something outside the mbox family.
Takeout engineer here. We currently use mboxo, but will be moving to mboxrd shortly.
Unfortunately this requires you to be able to log in. I had an account (with the same name I use here) mysteriously stop being able to log in about 6 years ago. I lost all of my email, contacts, and calendars. I was never able to find out why the account was shut down, I'm guessing it was a ToS violation for something I did several months before I got banned (made 100+ gmail accounts with my invites, didn't use them…
I had a similar experience with github. https://twitter.com/excelsiores/status/408239093328269312 support@github simply doesn't reply. Apparently, creating https://github.com/excelsiores/geek-misandry was enough to get me onto their "block and never reply to this user" list. Sad times. Wish they provided some way to export data before kicking off users like this.
Sadly, this is the way of tech companies though - skimp on real customer service & replace it with one sided FAQ's and unanswered forms/emails. The only way out of these situations is to get into the public eye & force a response on their part.
Thank you, Google. Glad to hear that the Data Liberation Front is alive and well: http://www.dataliberation.org/ From 2006: "We would never trap user data," he [Schmidt] said. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-we-wou...
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To play devil's advocate - you willingly gave it to them, with almost zero contractual expectations. In a technical sense it is their stuff, and they have graciously implemented a feature allowing you to retrieve a copy of it. I definitely agree that it's the "right" thing to do, but this kind of comment speaks of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility. They're offering a service, they don't have any inheren…
Absolutely not. The implicit agreement is that they provide a service to hold, manage, and use your stuff, and you give up a certain amount of privacy by allowing them to see it - and they get to advertise at you while you use the service, and maybe make money in other ways off your information. So in other words, it really is your stuff. Imagine if they locked your accounts from you out of malice - it's legal gray a…
I imagine they could completely shut down all unpaid gmail access at any moment with no legal implications (though I haven't read the fine print, and in that extreme case the courts would probably step in just to keep the country running smoothly).
What precedent is there to support your hypothetical lawsuit? I kind of disagree, they would just get a lot of negative PR.
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Wait, so you weren't backing up your email account?
I don't know anyone that backs up their gmail account. I'm sure many people here do, but I am fairly certain 99% of users do not.
However on checking takeout it turns out the one thing they don't provide is gmail! 8 of the 15 items backed up are related to Google+ though.