How To: Back up your Gmail account 3 ways (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXvGL9SDSVw#ws)
Google points to a software update error (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20037554-93.html?tag=mncol;txt) that caused thousands of Gmail users to lose e-mail (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20037019-93.html?tag=mncol;txt), contacts (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20037019-93.html?tag=mncol;txt), and folders (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20037019-93.html?tag=mncol;txt) last Sunday, but for the unfortunates who were affected by the glitch, any explanation for an emptier inbox is cold comfort.
Thankfully, there are ways to save the contents of your e-mail account online and on your desktop, and I show you three of them in the video above. While I focus on Gmail specifically this time around, the principles are the same for any Web mail service that supports POP forwarding, as most of them do.
If you have a favorite technique I didn't highlight in this video, feel free to share it in the comments below. In the meantime, here are some useful links to get started.
• Backupify (http://www.backupify.com/)
• List of Gmail-supported POP mail clients (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=12103)
• Mozilla Thunderbird (Windows) (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html)
• Mozilla Thunderbird (Mac) (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/all.html)