Question about email services and software

[lake_wrangler]

Hi gang.

For the longest time, I was using MS Outlook as my email client, to fetch my gmail acccount emails, using POP3 but leaving a copy on the server. That way, I had a local copy of my emails, while still being able to access them from the gmail website interface if needed whenever I was travelling, with my laptop.

I have/had over 100 different folders into which to separate and categorize my emails. (I also have archived emails dating back to either 2000 or 2002)

This year, I moved to Linux for good (I had installed it on my laptop, after MS stopped supporting XP, but was still using Win7 on my desktop computer until this spring). Doing so, I switched to Evolution as my new email client. When I did, I decided to switch to fetching my mail via IMAP, rather than POP3. I have just spent hours, today, setting up filters on my gmail to apply labels to my emails, so that the work would be done on the server, rather than locally (both to spare the computer the work of doing it, and to have the labels available online as well). I also read that Evolution can keep local copies of emails, in case you ever want to access your emails while offline. I have not set that up yet, but will soon (as soon as I'm done with the filters online for my labels).

Meanwhile, I read a few months ago about a guy who had a paid Yahoo mail account, and one day he was refused access to it because some of his emails were deemed inappropriate, or some such... And even though he was a paying customer, he had lost all his emails, his website, etc, because of it.

My question is:
If I use the function to save my emails locally, should I be protected if ever Google decided some of my emails were deemed "inappropriate"? (I don't expect them to ever be, but one never knows what may become politically incorrect, in the future...) Or should I also copy the emails into other local folders that are not tied in to my email account via IMAP?

[Dave]

My question is:
If I use the function to save my emails locally, should I be protected if ever Google decided some of my emails were deemed "inappropriate"? (I don't expect them to ever be, but one never knows what may become politically incorrect, in the future...) Or should I also copy the emails into other local folders that are not tied in to my email account via IMAP?

That would depend on Evolution's design, I think,

If Evolution is designed (or configured) to "track" or "sync" the local directory to the server, in a way which includes deletions, then if it were to poll the message list for the folder from Gmail and find that a message no longer existed, it would delete the local copy from the synchronized directory as well.

You might be able to configure it to "add new emails only, do not delete local copy if removed from the server". However, that would mean that if you did delete something from the server on one email client (say, a smartphone), the message would still appear to "be there" if you looked at the account from Evolution. That might be confusing.

Your best bet would be to periodically copy the messages to a local folder that's not tied to any remote (IMAP or POP3) account. Once copied, they'd be entirely under your local control. You could back them up however you wish... archive to a USB flash drive, compress, encrypt, push encrypted archives out into "cloud" storage, or whatever.

This would protect them against any Gmail policy changes (about appropriateness, or message size, or retention time, or etc.) at the cost of some additional disk space usage on your PC.

I decided years ago that I wanted to run my own domain and my own email servers, precisely to protect me against things like ISPs going out of business, changing policy, etc. It's a bit of work, but I haven't regretted it... and it wasn't hard to extent it to providing my wife with her own domain, web site, email system, and VoIP number, all run on our own hardware.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Thunderbird is typically seen as the open-source version of MS Office Outlook, and offers much the same service Outlook does. Being open sourced, you have less risk of being subject to the whims of censorship.

Having said that, if there's something you want to save, always backup your data. Even Jesus Saves. USB Drive is probably the easiest way, so you have physical storage rather than virtual, but I suppose tossing it into the Cloud can also give it protective anonymity.

[Atomic]

For what it's worth, once the e-mails are on your local box, they're yours. At this point, it's up to you to archive them. I use Thunderbird and regularly back up the entire directory structure to an external drive -- Belt and Suspenders type of guy that I am. I've had situations where I needed to recover a specific mail or thread with attachments, and I can use that to just dump the parent directory into my active system and browse/search at leisure.

Blessed are the pessimists, for they shall have made backups.

[lake_wrangler]

My question is:
If I use the function to save my emails locally, should I be protected if ever Google decided some of my emails were deemed "inappropriate"? (I don't expect them to ever be, but one never knows what may become politically incorrect, in the future...) Or should I also copy the emails into other local folders that are not tied in to my email account via IMAP?

That would depend on Evolution's design, I think,

If Evolution is designed (or configured) to "track" or "sync" the local directory to the server, in a way which includes deletions, then if it were to poll the message list for the folder from Gmail and find that a message no longer existed, it would delete the local copy from the synchronized directory as well.

The option is called "Automatically synchronize remote mail locally", so I'm guessing that it would indeed do just that, including deleting locally what was deleted on the server. I just haven't verified that, yet.

You might be able to configure it to "add new emails only, do not delete local copy if removed from the server". However, that would mean that if you did delete something from the server on one email client (say, a smartphone), the message would still appear to "be there" if you looked at the account from Evolution. That might be confusing.

From what I can tell, there is no such option in Evolution.

Your best bet would be to periodically copy the messages to a local folder that's not tied to any remote (IMAP or POP3) account. Once copied, they'd be entirely under your local control. You could back them up however you wish... archive to a USB flash drive, compress, encrypt, push encrypted archives out into "cloud" storage, or whatever.

This would protect them against any Gmail policy changes (about appropriateness, or message size, or retention time, or etc.) at the cost of some additional disk space usage on your PC.

I have to admit, I hadn't thought of policy changes that might remove existing messages that no longer fit the policy... But don't they usually warn people, about that? My main concern (until you mentioned that possibility) was whether a suddenly closed account would register as "unreacheable," without affecting the local folders, or as having my messages deleted, which would then most likely prompt the local email client to delete the local folders as well...

I suppose I could just go back to reaching the email via POP3, storing locally, while also keeping the server copy there. Can someone tell

I decided years ago that I wanted to run my own domain and my own email servers, precisely to protect me against things like ISPs going out of business, changing policy, etc. It's a bit of work, but I haven't regretted it... and it wasn't hard to extent it to providing my wife with her own domain, web site, email system, and VoIP number, all run on our own hardware.

I suppose that means you have to register a domain name, then... Is that a costly affair? How much work is required in then setting up an email server, and whatever else is needed to make that work?

[lake_wrangler]

Thunderbird is typically seen as the open-source version of MS Office Outlook, and offers much the same service Outlook does. Being open sourced, you have less risk of being subject to the whims of censorship.

I had looked at using Thunderbird, but decided not to for two reasons: first, from reading about the mail format of local files, Thunderbird uses one big text file to store all its emails. Considering that I have a huge backlog of emails reaching back 13 or 15 years, one such single file may become unwieldy and could easily become corrupted. On the other hand, Evolution stores its emails in separate files for each email. (So do Sylpheed and Claws mail clients, but they use the MH mail format, which may or may not be quite as solid as the Maildir format used by Evolution, according to my "research". Also, Sylpheed and Claws do not allow to compose HTML messages - though Claws is supposed to read them via a plugin -- however, I was never able to make that part work, when I tried Claws).

The other reason was that while I did want to give it a fair trial anyway, I could not manage to import my emails into thunderbird, neither in the Windows version (from which I would then have imported into the Linux version), nor from the Linux version. So much for that...

Having said that, if there's something you want to save, always backup your data. Even Jesus Saves. USB Drive is probably the easiest way, so you have physical storage rather than virtual, but I suppose tossing it into the Cloud can also give it protective anonymity.

For what it's worth, once the e-mails are on your local box, they're yours. At this point, it's up to you to archive them. I use Thunderbird and regularly back up the entire directory structure to an external drive -- Belt and Suspenders type of guy that I am. I've had situations where I needed to recover a specific mail or thread with attachments, and I can use that to just dump the parent directory into my active system and browse/search at leisure.

Blessed are the pessimists, for they shall have made backups.

I hadn't thought of that... I was merely thinking of local folders within Evolution. Copying the whole directory onto another drive would indeed be an efficient way to ensure nothing is lost, should Google want to play tricks with me, for some reason...

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Thunderbird is typically seen as the open-source version of MS Office Outlook, and offers much the same service Outlook does. Being open sourced, you have less risk of being subject to the whims of censorship.

I had looked at using Thunderbird, but decided not to for two reasons: first, from reading about the mail format of local files, Thunderbird uses one big text file to store all its emails. Considering that I have a huge backlog of emails reaching back 13 or 15 years, one such single file may become unwieldy and could easily become corrupted. On the other hand, Evolution stores its emails in separate files for each email. (So do Sylpheed and Claws mail clients, but they use the MH mail format, which may or may not be quite as solid as the Maildir format used by Evolution, according to my "research". Also, Sylpheed and Claws do not allow to compose HTML messages - though Claws is supposed to read them via a plugin -- however, I was never able to make that part work, when I tried Claws).

The other reason was that while I did want to give it a fair trial anyway, I could not manage to import my emails into thunderbird, neither in the Windows version (from which I would then have imported into the Linux version), nor from the Linux version. So much for that...

Actually, that's changing. Check out Maildir support in Firefox. Still in beta, but they're working on it. Also working in MHL format, which is commonly used.

HTML messages are bad ideas all 'round. Not reading html code is a feature, not a bug. It's probably more dangerous than allowing javascript to run in emails.

[lake_wrangler]

HTML messages are bad ideas all 'round. Not reading html code is a feature, not a bug. It's probably more dangerous than allowing javascript to run in emails.

But is it as dangerous when reading them under a Linux system? Would any malicious coding still be able to do damage there?

(I admit, I am addicted to HTML messages... I like being able to format text, and to see nicely formatted newsletters which include images... So go ahead and mock me, I don't care... )

[GlytchMeister]

StartPage is making an email service I think. You might want to look into that.

(Sorry, I'm posting from work during break, I'd be more in depth otherwise)

[Dave]

I decided years ago that I wanted to run my own domain and my own email servers, precisely to protect me against things like ISPs going out of business, changing policy, etc. It's a bit of work, but I haven't regretted it... and it wasn't hard to extent it to providing my wife with her own domain, web site, email system, and VoIP number, all run on our own hardware.

I suppose that means you have to register a domain name, then... Is that a costly affair? How much work is required in then setting up an email server, and whatever else is needed to make that work?

The registrar I use (GKG) charges around $10-$12 per year per domain.

You need a server to run the mail software on, and it simplifies things a lot if it has a static IP address (not all residential Internet providers will give you one, and many who do will charge you an extra dollar or five per month). You need to set up the mail server software, monitor it, deal with security and spam filtering issues, and so forth.

I've been doing this stuff for a living for decades so it's no big deal, but it can be daunting for the first-time sysadmin!

Most of the common Linux distros have all of the necessary software available, but you should probably plan on buying or borrowing several of the O'Reilly handbooks having to do with such matters, or reading a bunch of Internet howtos.

You don't need much in the way of hardware - any cheap low-power PC would suffice. A "being retired because it can't run Windows 8" (or "10") desktop would be lavish overkill. I ran my services here at home on an old Pentium 100 system for quite a while. I'm sure some people are running their domain and email on a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone.