Why (And How) Should I Back Up My Web-Based Email?

It wasn’t always this way, but I am a big fan of web-based email.  I realize that all email, to some extent, is web-based, but I am talking about dedicated web-based email services such as Yahoo and Google give. They charge nothing and give us more email storage space than most of us will ever be able to use. I am a fan of these email services mainly for two reasons. First is accessibility. I can go anywhere and use anyone’s computer and access my email. Second is reliability. Although I have had hard drives crash and have traded one computer for another many times my email is always there waiting for me. When I have to reload a customer’s computer and find out they are using Microsoft Outlook I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. I know that unless they have backed up their email, which most have not, they have lost, not just their years of email, but all their email addresses also. I immediately turn missionary and try to convert them to a Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail email account. But just recently I have been made aware that I may have made too much of the reliability of web-based email.

Web-Based Email Is Safe, Right?
My clients who use Outlook who have lost their email usually have lost it due to hard drive failure, a really nasty virus that destroys data, or to user error where they have accidentally erased their data. They can’t restore their email from the email server because in almost all cases they have told the server to erase email that has been downloaded (usually by default). These are things I have never heard of happening on Yahoo, Google, or MSN. But even if hardware failure is not a concern for the security of email storage I have learned that hackers are. That Atlantic recently ran a story about a woman whose Gmail account was hacked.(Read it here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/hacked/8673/) She was able to regain control of her email account, but found out that the hacker had erased all 7 years of her saved email. This was a tremendous blow to her and her business. This woman and her journalist husband (who knows important people) visited with Google engineers and learned that thousands of email accounts are hijacked not yearly, not monthly, but daily. To anyone who depends upon their Yahoo or Gmail email accounts this is alarming. It has knocked me out of my stupor of web-based email as being the ultimate service for accessibility and security.

How to Secure My Email
Since learning this I have rethought my position on web-based email. I still prefer the convenience of a web-based email account, but rather than turning up my nose at computer based email such as Outlook or Thunderbird, I have expanded my viewpoint to include them. I still need to access my email from any one of several different computers and my smart phone. But how do I secure my web-based email from being lost by hackers? Of course the first thing is to use a very strong password. That will help, but is anything but certain. The second thing is to back up my email.  I know of updates that allow Outlook users to backup their email.  To my knowledge there is no “backup” feature on Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail. Yet backing up web-based email is relatively simple if imperfect. You can use Outlook if you own Microsoft Office to download your web-based email or you can use the free Thunderbird. Before you download email make sure you check the “Leave a copy of messages on the server,” otherwise your email will be removed from the server immediately and you will not have a backup (Click here to see how). Additionally your email will then exist on your computer and no longer be accessible on the web. The web-mail interface is still my main interface since I am always jumping from computer to computer, but I will open Outlook at the end of each day on my main computer so it will download a copy of all incoming email.

Not Perfect
This is not a perfect backup solution for a couple of reasons. First, Outlook only downloads what is in my “Inbox.” I have about thirty folders where I have sorted mail over the years. Because the mail was already in these folders before I started using Outlook as a backup the items in these folders are not backed up. I have it from a reputable source that Thunderbird will download the email in your folders and not just your inbox. This is definitely a "plus" on the side of Thunderbird. Another issue is that when Outlook downloads the mail my web-based interface shows the mail as “read” (non-bolded). This is definitely a bit of an annoyance. When weighed with the other options--having email accessible only on one computer or using web-based email and not having a backup—I find these annoyances as marginally acceptable.

Take It Up a Notch
I believe it is time for web-based email hosts to take it up a notch. When I worked for a mid-sized company we used Outlook exclusively and kept backups of our email files. Now that I am a small business man I do not have access to those kinds of resources and rely on web-based email for my business. I would like see a more matured way of securing email from hacking attacks. I want to know that I can get my email back should my email account be compromised. Perhaps I am asking a lot from a free service. I would even be willing to pay a reasonable amount for this email “backup” service. I can see that this backup service would quickly expand to cover things like Google Docs and other cloud-based data.