When did you last backup your email?

[Harrison]

Most of us these days tend to backup most of our data regularly (well you should!), but how often do you bother backing up your emails and contacts?

I am guilty of never backing mine up until it is too late. When my last system died I was lucky that the hdd was ok so I could retrieve the emails and contacts files from the hdd to import back into the fresh copy of Outlook, but even after this I've just realised I've never backed up my emails on this system since I built it. Mad considering my emails contain all of my registration details for many sites, plus all of the confirmation, serial numbers and confirmation details for all of the server based software I use. So after realising this I think it's time I actually do a backup!

[AlexJ]

Never!

Because I use several computers depending on if I'm at home or at uni, I exclusively use webmail. I have no idea how often Google do backups.

[Stephen Coates]

I use GMail most of the time, so my emails are on both my machine, and with Google, so I never back them up.

When it comes to people's email addresses, I either remember them or write them down somewhere if I am likley to forget them.

[Harrison]

Webmail is definitely the exception, well unless anyone is using a central exchange server or using an IMAP email login, in which case the central email server needs to be backed up.

Did you know that Google keep an archive record of every email on their network for "research" purposes?

[AlexJ]

Did you know that Google keep an archive record of every email on their network for "research" purposes?

Yep, and it doesn't really bother me. I'd be suprised if any ISP deleted emails sent through them as soon as their legal obligation was up. Google have openly said they keep a record indefinately, I suspect many others also do but aren't so open about it. If they fancy reading though my email (mostly spam, with a few mailing lists and one or two actually personalised things) then great. People are foolish to think that any messages they send online (email,IM etc.) isn't going to be retained and viewed by others.

[Demon Cleaner]

I get 90% of my mails at work, and I backup them every 2 month.

[Harrison]

People are foolish to think that any messages they send online (email,IM etc.) isn't going to be retained and viewed by others.

Instant messaging servers do tend to keep logs that record conversations, and you can even set them to save the logs locally, but all instant messaging servers I've ever used have a cache time setting that clears the log after a set time frame. If it didn't do this the logs would be very large and quickly start to fill up the server and slow it down. I expect most of the commercial instant messaging services work in a similar way, although they do obviously have a much bigger infrastructure and resources to hand so could very well have the storage space to store logs of any size.

As for email, only web based main would actually ever get stored due to the way a standard pop server works. As soon as you log in and download your email it is deleted from the server. Some record of it's existence is normally recorded in a log but not the actual message contents, normally just the header information that contains the origin and subject text. It would only be if connected to an email server via imap that the emails would remain on the server and you would access them remotely, all be it on a local domain server or an internet mail server.

[Submeg]

Never, dont really need them for anything

[J T]

Never, if I lost it I'd just get the contacts back another way, same for info and site registration details. I'd be a tad peeved but it really wouldn't be too much of a blow to me if my email went tits-up.