GMail / Google Account Backup Best-Practice Thoughts
This post is probably better served on Datahoarder. But a thought occurred after reading some horror stories of those who have lost account access - some who were Gmail account holders for more than a decade or two.
-I already archive my email locally with MailStore, and I have those files backed up in various places. The email archiving is done 1x day, every day, via an automated script. So, I rarely have to think about that. I do the same thing with Chrome bookmarks. They're synced. But I use a script that exports bookmarks every 3 days to a local folder (which itself is backed up elsewhere).
-I will also occasionally (every 6 months or so) export with Takeout in the highest fidelity settings and formats available. Anything pushed to Photos or Drive is also sitting locally on my desktop, and that data, too, is backed up. Yes - I'm aware that Takeout is not exactly perfect.
I don't necessarily have anything important from the PlayStore, aside from apps that I use, and then use my Gmail email to sign into those with. Any transaction history would likely be included in Takeout.
-But "Sign in with Google" dependencies would be annoying to lose access. And it would be a good idea if I audited just what's using that and how many, assuming recovery options for those services/sites/apps would not be sufficient enough to regain access without the email address.
Thing I am less sure about:
-Gmail settings, not just Gmail messages: Labels, Filters, Blocked addresses, Send mail as/aliases, POP/IMAP settings, etc.
-Any devices I have associated with said Google account. Obviously, any device/phone backups, call & sms history (I presume that would be in Takeout, though, I think?) I don't know what exactly I would do with the phone backup data from Takeout/how I would import that or make use of it.
I'm wondering if it would be wise to set up a separate email account on a different provider where all email from Gmail is automatically forwarded to the secondary email address. E.g., if a Gmail account is suddenly restricted or deactivated, does the user continue to receive new emails, or do they bounce back? If there's anything else I should be doing, I'd welcome the feedback. Thanks!