Archiving emails

Post Reply New Topic

Having been very actively writing articles lately and wanting to securely backup my portfolio, I was looking for a secure way to store copies of all my articles. I have already asked about this before I think but I have done research and need an opinion on one specific thing.

I found one great solution I think... www.LuxSci.com premium archiving. They set up a special mailbox and every incoming mail gets archived in an archive where you can only download the stored mails, but you cannot edit/alter/remove them. This seems like a waterproof solution because every article I write I could just send to that own mailbox where it gets automatically archived. Sounds like a 100% waterproof solution to me really.

The only downside is that it is pricy, about 140 USD per year excluding domainname (but a domain at name.com costs 6 USD per year so that is no issue). Do you know of any similar services (equally waterproof and secure) for a lower price? If not I will buy the archive, it is a high sum of cash but it is worth it if I can then write without a single worry about the security of my writings.

Some issues to consider are:

1. Will the company still exist in the future? If they go bust what happens to your archive? In the recession expect lots of companies going to the wall.

2. Privacy. Are your emails encrypted before uploading to their site? If not who else gets to read them? How hackable are they?

My personal approach with archiving (emails, my work, photos etc) is to back them up weekly to a CD or DVD. First I zip all the files using 7Zip to create an encrypted archive then cut it to CD. It is important to keep the CD at a different address in case your house burns down. This way is inexpensive and you are in control of your own archives.

(7Zip is freeware and in my opinion superior to WinZip because you can also encrypt the file names in 7Zip but not WinZip which has become bloatware with too much crap)

LuxSci have been around for 10 years with an excellent reputation, so the continueing existance of the service is not the issue. The price is a bit high but the service is exactly what I was after, so I would only change my mind if exactly the same service exists for a lower price (hence the question )

Although alternative backup methods are of course handy to know. Know though that I have contamination OCD and thus not always feel like touching my PC (the desktop part containing the harddrive I mean) and hence I not always manage to backup in time when using USB sticks or CD ROMs. An archive hosted at the server of a reliable host is the perfect alternative for me as long as these OCD issues are ongoing.

I do not know how windows stores e-mail, but on Unix/Linux systems they basically stored as text-files. So my long-term storage is just burning a CD. For US-$140 you can buy a lot of CDs.

If you have really important items, so store a second copy with a trustworthy friend. It is very unlikely that it burn in both houses at the same time. If this is still not safe enough, banks also offer boxes in their strong rooms and a relative small box for CD shall be not that expensive.

Do you use outlook?
It creates a folder in your computer, doesn't it? You could just upload it to a server. Amazon S3 is good, like $1 a month, more if you have more stuff uploaded. Get also JungleDisk to upload your emails, it supports automatic backup and also incremental backups, and is like $20 (pay once).