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@@ -167,24 +167,27 @@ personal blog
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-<p>I&rsquo;ve used gmail since the beta launched touting a whopping 1GB of storage. I thought this was a massive leap in email technology at the time. I was lucky enough to get an invite fairly quickly. Not suprisingly, I have many years of emails, attachments, and photos. I certainly do not want to lose the content of many of these emails.</p>
+<p>I&rsquo;ve used gmail since the beta launched touting a whopping 1GB of storage. I thought this was a massive leap in email technology at the time. I was lucky enough to get an invite fairly quickly. Not suprisingly, I have many years of emails, attachments, and photos. I certainly do not want to lose the content of many of these emails. Despite the redundancy of the data that Google secures, I still feel better retaining a copy of this data on my own physical machines.</p>
-<p>Despite the redundancy of the data that Google secures, I still feel better retaining a copy of this data on my own physical machines. I am aware of tools such as <a href=http://www.gmvault.org>gmvault</a> and have used it in the past with success. I have more recently been in interested in constantly syncing and snapshotting my personal data. I&rsquo;ve setup <a href=https://www.synology.com/en-ca/dsm/feature/cloud_sync>Synology&rsquo;s Cloud Sync</a> and keep copies of most of my cloud data.</p>
 <p>The thought of completely de-googling has crossed my mind on occassion. The convenience coupled with my admiration of their engineering has prevented me from doing so thus far. Though, I may end up doing so at some point in the future.</p>
 <h2 id=synology-mailplus-server>Synology MailPlus Server</h2>
-<p>Synology&rsquo;s MailPlus seems to be a good candidate for backing up this data. By enabling POP3 fetching, it&rsquo;s possible to both retroactively and continually fetch these emails. If a disaster ever did occur, having these emails would be hugely beneficial.</p>
+<p>Synology products are reasonably priced for what you get (essentially a cloud in a box) and there is very little maintenace reuqired. I&rsquo;ve recently been in interested in constantly syncing and snapshotting my personal data. I&rsquo;ve setup <a href=https://www.synology.com/en-ca/dsm/feature/cloud_sync>Synology&rsquo;s Cloud Sync</a> and keep copies of most of my cloud data.</p>
+<p>I&rsquo;ve used tools such as <a href=http://www.gmvault.org>gmvault</a> with success in the past. Setting this up on a cron seems like a viable option as well. However, I don&rsquo;t really need a lot of the features it offers and do not plan to restore this data to another account.</p>
+<p>Synology&rsquo;s MailPlus seems to be a good candidate for backing up this data. By enabling POP3 fetching, it&rsquo;s possible to both retroactively and continually fetch these emails. If a disaster ever did occur, having these emails could be a life saver.</p>
 <p>Installing MailPlus can be done from the Package Center:</p>
 <p><img src=/images/backing-up-gmail-with-synology/install-mailplus-server.png alt=image></p>
 <p>Next, I went into <strong>Synology MailPlus Server</strong> and on the left, clicked on <strong>Account</strong> and ensured my user was marked as active.</p>
-<p>Afterwords, I followed <a href=https://kb.synology.com/en-in/DSM/tutorial/How_should_I_receive_external_email_messages_via_MailPlus>these instructions</a> in order to start backing up gmail emails.</p>
+<p>Afterwords, I followed <a href=https://kb.synology.com/en-in/DSM/tutorial/How_should_I_receive_external_email_messages_via_MailPlus>these instructions</a> in order to start backing up emails.</p>
 <p>When entering the POP3 credentials, I created an <a href=https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords>app password</a> solely for authenticating to POP3 from the Synology device. This is required because I have 2-Step verification enabled on my account. There doesn&rsquo;t seem to be a more secure way to access POP3 at the moment. It does seem like app password access is limited in scope (when MFA is enabled). These app passwords can&rsquo;t be used to login to the main Google account.</p>
 <p>I made sure to set the <code>Fetch Range</code> to <code>All</code> in order to get all emails from the beginning of time.</p>
 <p>After this, mail started coming in.</p>
 <p><img src=/images/backing-up-gmail-with-synology/mail-plus-incoming-mail.png alt=image></p>
 <p>Searching through emails also worked quite quickly. I&rsquo;ll test the search again after the 19 years of emails finally finish syncing.</p>
+<p><strong>UPDATE</strong>: The performance of search was still fast (a few seconds) after syncing ~50K emails, which is a relief if I ever did have to search for an email quickly.</p>
 <h2 id=securing-synology>Securing Synology</h2>
-<p>Since Synology devices are not hermetically sealed, it&rsquo;s a good idea to secure them by <a href=https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/How_to_add_extra_security_to_your_Synology_NAS#x_anchor_id8>enabling MFA</a> to help prevent being the <a href=https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/qlocker-ransomware-returns-to-target-qnap-nas-devices-worldwide/>victim of ransomware</a>. It is also wise to backup your device&rsquo;s settings and volumes to the cloud using a tool such as <a href=https://www.synology.com/en-ca/dsm/feature/hyper_backup>Hyper Backup</a>.</p>
+<p>Since Synology devices are not hermetically sealed, it&rsquo;s a good idea to secure them by <a href=https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/How_to_add_extra_security_to_your_Synology_NAS#x_anchor_id8>enabling MFA</a> to help prevent being the <a href=https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/qlocker-ransomware-returns-to-target-qnap-nas-devices-worldwide/>victim of ransomware</a>. It is also wise to backup your system settings and volumes to the cloud using a tool such as <a href=https://www.synology.com/en-ca/dsm/feature/hyper_backup>Hyper Backup</a>.
+Encrypting your shared volumes is also a good idea, since sadly Synology <a href=https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/12/post/144665>does not support full-disk encryption</a>.</p>
 <h2 id=summary>Summary</h2>
-<p>Having backups is essential for almost everything. Backing up your cloud data shouldn&rsquo;t be any different. I certainly feel more at ease having done this.</p>
+<p>Having backups is essential for almost everything. Backing up your cloud data shouldn&rsquo;t be any different. I certainly feel more at ease for having done this.</p>
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