Seven ways to keep your Gmail data safe

To Another Gmail Account

In the event of another software bug or system crash, the chances of all Gmail accounts being compromised is minimal. Even when Gmail rolls out new features, they do so in phases—and this is primarily to identify and fix any teething issues. Therefore, all you have to do is create another Gmail account and import all mails and contacts from your primary account. To do this, sign in to your new Gmail account, click on the little 'gear' icon in the top right corner and click 'Mail Settings'. Here, under 'Accounts and Import', you'll be able to import mail from your old account.

To Hotmail, using TrueSwitch

Hotmail may have lost out to Gmail when it comes to number of features, but they still have an estimated 364 million users—the highest in the world for any free email provider. And they want to make it all the more easier if you decide to make the switch from any other free email account to Hotmail. To do the switch, Hotmail has tied up with TrueSwitch (trueswitch.com).

TrueSwitch is normally a paid service that makes it easy to transfer all your email from one account to another. In this case, Hotmail will bear the expense, if you decide to switch. But you can use this feature to back up your Gmail data and still keep on using Gmail. To use the service, head to secure5.trueswitch.com/winlive and enter all the required credentials.

Gmail-Backup

Gmail-Backup is a software tool which you can download for free from gmail-backup.com. To use it, you need to have IMAP access activated in Gmail. To do this, sign in to your Gmail account, click on the little 'gear' icon in the top right corner and click 'Mail Settings'.

Here, under 'Forwarding and POP/IMAP', you can enable IMAP access. Gmail-backup will use IMAP access to create a complete backup of your accounts data on your hard drive. Depending on how much data you have and the speed of your internet connection, this could take quite a while. Your computer and internet connection will need to be active for the duration of the transfer. The softwate also has a restore function, to copy locally stored data back into a Gmail account. Gmail-backup's website also has a forum which can address any issues you may have.

 

 

Mailstore

Another free solution for email backup, Mailstore (mailstore.com) can access multiple online email inboxes using POP3 or IMAP access. The process is easy enough; just download the free software and enter in your email credentials. Like Gmail-backup, Mailstore has an online community which can address backup problems.

Gmail Keeper

For a one-time price of $19.95, Gmail Keeper (gmailkeeper.com) offers a Gmail-specific backup tool that is easy to understand and can backup all folders and labels in Gmail (including the inbox, sent mail, starred mail, drafts and so on). It can backup everything as a .ZIP file to your hard drive. It also offers the ability to back up multiple Gmail accounts at the same time.

Backupify

Backupify (backupify.com) can backup all kinds of online services that you use, such as Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Zoho and Blogger. Once backed up, you can search through, download or restore the data at any time. They offer three plans; a free plan that can backup up to 5 accounts with a storage limit of 2GB per account, a Pro 100 plan that can back up 25 different accounts with 20GB storage per account for $4.99 a month and a Pro 500 plan that can back up an unlimited number of accounts with unlimited storage for $19.99 a month.