BackupMyTweets

How does BackupMyTweets work?

Just click the button on our home page. You will then be directed to twitter.com so that you can give us permission to access your account. Once you do that, we'll start backing up your tweets. When we're finished, we'll send you a direct message with a link to your backups. Click that link and you'll be prompted to sign up for a free BackupMy.Net account. Then you can download or view your tweets in several formats. Users who create BackupMy.Net accounts will get automatic daily backups.

You said you don't require a password, but then I have to type it in. What gives?

This is a subtle distinction. We don't ever (ever!) see your password. You are actually typing your password in at Twitter.com - on Twitter's servers. When you do that, you grant us permission to access your twitter account. If you decide you don't want us to have that access, you can log back into Twitter.com and revoke that access. You maintain control the whole time.

Contrast this with an application that directly asks for your password. They DO have your password, and could theoretically do anything you can. They could change your email address or password, for example. They have total control of your account. Twitter is rightfully phasing out this type of access because of the obvious security concerns.

Why do you make me follow you?

We make you follow us when you sign up so that we can send you a direct message when your tweets are backed up. Occasionally, we will also send direct messages with important updates about our service. You are free to unfollow us if you like. We won't be offended.

Why don't you backup all my tweets?

Twitter does not currently offer access to all of your tweets. While they still exist in Twitter's system, their API only allows applications like ours to access the most recent 3,200. So if you have more than that, you're out of luck for now. If Twitter decides to open this up, we will go back and grab all your tweets as soon as we are able.

Why is Twitter so stingy with old tweets?

We don't really know, but we assume it has something to do with their extremely rapid growth. Keeping up full access to every tweet ever written would be both very difficult and very costly.

Are my private tweets secure?

In a word, no. Your private tweets are not very private because of the way Twitter works. If someone allows an application to access their account, that application can read their private tweets. That's not so bad - you've given that application permission to do so. But what is bad is that that application can also read any of your friends' private tweets. So be warned - "private" isn't as private as it may seem.

What if I change my mind? Can I revoke BackupMyTweets' access to my account?

Yes. Just log into your Twitter account and disable access from BackupMyTweets.

BackupMyMail

How does BackupMyMail work?

It's simple. All you need to do is provide your email account info, and BackupMyMail will check your account every day and copy your email onto our servers. If you ever need to restore from your backup, you can come back to our site and download your email.

Doesn’t my service provider have backups? Why do I need you?

You would think that any company who wants to stay in business will have some sort of backup plan. It turns out that many do not. Even Google has lost entire GMail accounts. But the biggest reason to use BackupMyMail is that you can control your backups. Ever accidentally delete an important email? With BackupMyMail you can get it back.

Does BackupMyMail backup my attachments?

Yes. Your attachments will be backed up with your mail.

Can I backup more than one email account?

Yes. Once you create an account you can backup additional email addresses for a nominal fee.

How to snapshots work?

BackupMyMail will check your email account every day. That means that the system knows exactly what your email account's contents are at all times. This can come in handy if you accidentally delete an email message. You can go back to your email and start over with it just the way it was before you made the mistake.

In practice, this just means that you must pick a date from which to download your backup, and your backup will contain the same email messages that it did on that date, even if you've deleted some messages since then.

Is my email password secure?

BackupMyMail takes data security very seriously. Your passwords will be secured by state of the art encryption and stripped from our server logs. We are eagerly waiting for the technology to access your email without us having your password. As soon as it's available, reliable, and secure, we'll use it.

Gmail says I have 1.2GB of email. Why is my backup 1.6 GB?

Gmail's IMAP implementation is non-standard. Gmail keeps a copy of every single message in your account in a folder called "All Mail". If you keep mail in folders other than All Mail, Gmail efficiently doesn't store them twice. That's fine for Gmail, but since we store your backups in a plain text format (.mbox), we have to duplicate messages. We could just back up the All Mail folder (and nothing else), but then we'd lose the organization provided by the folder system. We think its a worthwhile tradeoff to use a little more storage to ensure that your backups are both easily accessible and organized. Also, we backup messages you delete in case you decide you need them again. Those messages will take up space at BackupMyMail, but won't show up on Gmail.

Do you backup my spam or trash?

Yes. BackupMyMail backs up your entire email account. If you don't want your spam or trash folders backed up, we recommend emptying them out frequently.

What is your refund policy?

If you are not satisfied with BackupMyMail, please contact us for a full refund.