Florian Zieboll <f.zieboll@???> wrote:

> If the fear of loosing your mail archive is the only reason to avoid
> IMAP: Many IMAP capable mail clients support synchronizing to local
> folders. For those that don't, you can easily create a local (or remote)
> backup with isync/mbsync which could even be evoked by the mail client
> itself, like ol' fetchmail: just set up an additional "backup account".

Just make sure that you either keep backups of the local copy, or make sure the sync process won't delete stuff from the local copy. Otherwise, if the provider (or you, or you mail client) "gets it wrong" and your mail disappears from the server, then it'll also disappear from your locally synced copy as well.

There was a case not that long ago where a journalist has his Apple account hacked. The hacker first used social engineering against another outfit to get more details, then used social engineering against Apple to get access to the account - and then deleted all the photos held online. But because photo syncing was on, the journalist found all his photos disappearing from his devices as well as the cloud.

Syncing is a powerful tool !