I’m a big fan of backing up your data (as I’ve made clear in prior posts including this one). Using traditional email programs such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, you have copies of your emails on your computer and can make backups of them. With the increasing use of web based email such as Google’s Gmail email service, how do you create a local backup of all of your emails? While I can’t address every web based mail service, you can learn how to make a local backup of your Gmail account from this article on Wired’s How-To-Wiki.

(For Hotwire users, check out this article from Wired.)

Remember, don’t be an idiot: backup your data.