I actually have important information in my mailbox. accept of invoices and receipts that I get to my mail, I also have some old sentimental letters that I would hate to loose.
I have a special folder in my email account that I retain for reference and such. I always depend on the "cloud" maintaining that. This thread has helped me realize the need to back it up.
Kinda like people who bring crashed hard drives to you:
"Did you back up recently?"
"No, I didn't think of it, until now!"
It's so convenient to have web mail in this day and age, you just assume that it'll be forever retrievable where ever you are and when ever you will need it.
These days my email contents mainly consist of 1) emails to & from friends, some of whom are overseas, 2) receipts from online purchases, 3) confirmations of online sign-ups, and 4) the usual political emails, jokes, and "you've got to see this cute video" type of emails forwarded by family members. I delete most of those in category 4, but save all of those in categories 1-3 at two or three different webmail accounts.
Admittedly, most of my stuff is really not that important (except the receipts), so this multiple-account style back-up method is sufficient for my purposes. I don't personally bother with offline client back-up copies (i.e. Outlook). I used to use such clients back when I had dial-up and needed to be able to do email reading & writing without tying up the phone line. But now I just keep my email (and copies) "out there" in the hands of professional email providers, instead of trusting things to my own computer. (It's the same reason I have a box at my local post office instead of having a mailbox at the end of my driveway.)
Anyway, to answer the question: "not really." I have nothing of tremendous significance in my email -- unless you count the notification that I won the Nigerian lottery.
Just thought of something: Ok, my mail is backed up, so I won't loose my materials, but I have no way of making sure that my privacy will be always saved. What if the information gets to somebody else? Some of it is personal... Am I the only one not loving the growing 'cloud' trend?
Email has typically always been hosted with a 3rd party unless you are hosting it on your own server for example a Linux server at home or a dedicated server hosted w/ a hosting company.
I'd rather have my email hosted at Gmail than with an ISP. If you call an ISP their tech support usually has more access than required for fixing problem and the ability to read your email, and sometimes can even see your passwords in clear text for troubleshooting purposes!
I'm far less concerned about some sys-admin at Goggle reading my emails
General rule of thumb that's good for all situations though - don't put anything in your email that you wouldn't want taped to your front door.
If you have anything personal you don't want to get out I'd store it someplace save like a thumb drive in your safe and delete it from the mail servers.