My personal email account is managed through Gmail it works well and it's free. Truthfully I don't stay up at night worrying that Google is going to come crashing down one day and I'm going to lose my data, but if there was a free automated independent service why not put it to work? Enter Backupify; they are powered by Amazon S3 so it's reliable. Backupify offers free automated storage for multiple accounts: Flickr, Twitter, Hotmail, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Address Book and Facebook.
I first learned of this service when I was looking to close my Facebook account and wanted an easy way to get my data out of that privacy nightmare. After a few quick clicks I had a Backupify account and a couple clicks later it was backing up Facebook, every 7 days automatically. When the weekly backups are complete I receive a status update email reporting that the backup was successful.
Next I decided to backup Twitter, why not? Twitter doesn't keep my messages forever so I a digital record of all my random thoughts I've shouted to the world. I really like twitter for this, it reminds me of a soapbox on speaker's corner.
Recently I began thinking about my email and realized I wasn't applying the same precautions that I've been applying to the rest of my computer life. That is having at least two independent copies of everything. All of my PC's backup to my Windows Home Server and that backs up to Carbonite as well my photos backup to Google Picasa Web. My Gmail however is only at Google.
As for me I've got everything ticking along quite nicely and can continue sleeping well at night with the knowledge that my mail is stored in more than one place. Some may claim I'm a little OCD and I would not necessarily disagree with that assessment, however it's free and I don't have to do anything.
Reader comments
Backupify – free backup for your mail, contacts & calendar
Do you really need extra care?????
I have hotmail account since 1997 and every piece of data is still
There, and accessible whenever I wish..
....
I agree it may be overkill. I have old accounts too, my Yahoo.com address is so old it still has a 4 digit password.I'm not shill for Backupify it's just a cool free service that works well and requires no work on my part.Just wanted to share it with the community. Some will find the tip useful others may not. And that's OK too.
+1 for -1 facebook
Facebook a privacy nightmare? Wow, I must have missed the contract we entered into that forced people to post information there. Privacy starts with the user. Don't post what you don't want out there. Simple solution to a simple problem.
Actually mpscan Facebook keeps moving the bar on what is and is not private. The"contract" we entered into was the privacy policy at Facebook anddespite your sarcasm it is real.Facebook entered into an agreement with its user base that things marked private would be private. However, Facebook has routinely changed its privacy settingsafter the fact and although they allow me to continue to update my privacysettings, the default after a privacy upgrade is to opt everyone into"public" until we tell the otherwise.Now I as a full-on nerd routinely monitor my settings but people less nerdy and OCD than me don't and without their knowing are now sharing more than they thought.I'm fully capable of locking down my info on Facebook. I'm just choosing notto be a user of a service I don't respect. There are restaurants where Idon't eat at because I don't like the service I get even if I like their food.Facebook serves food I like, I can't stand their service.
I personally closed my facebook account. Twice when the privacy policy's changed all my info reverted back to everyone. Just because I want my friends to see my pics doesn't mean I want everyone to see them. Almost every major radio news organization has done a story on facebook and their privacy problems so there is no reason to be rude to someone who is just stating what most of us know.
1) Facebook doesn't adhere to their policies
2) Facebook changes their privacy policies routinely and auto opts you in anyways
3) Facebook buries a lot of their privacy settings, making them difficult to change even if you wanted to
In truth, the "simple solution to a simple problem" theory has been thrown around by quite a few commentators, but it really just shows that you don't grasp the scope of the problem. First, it's been revealed that among the various pieces of data being sold to advertisers by Facebook is the data relating to where clicks originate from...in other words, if you click on an ad, even by accident, the advertiser knows not only that they got a hit, but by whom. Further, you can't control the use of information arising from innocent postings by friends. There are myriad other areas that are beyond your direct control that aren't addressed by the "don't post it if you don't want it shared" philosophy; a naive position to say the least.
Useful, although I already use DexRex and Google Sync, to back up my texts, contacts and calendar. Although another back-up won't harm me.
Issac, thanks so much for featuring our company in this blog post! (I am a marketing analyst for them). It's great to hear you found our service useful to you and decided to add multiple accounts to your service. It's a very true use case that all of this data is not stored on your computer and if anything every crashed, where would you get it? No where unless you use a backup provider. It's not that you worry that Gmail or Twitter is going to crash, but more that you could get hacked, accidentally delete something or get locked out of your account.
Yes I use this service and it is great but I don't seem to understand why this is on the crackberry website. Slow news day because of the 4th gen iPhone?
Thanks Isaac for showcasing a good product.
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