[marssaxman]

I've been doing this for years, though I don't really think of it as "having a backup" so much as "using an IMAP client". Works fine. It's really useful to be able to make up a new email address for every company who wants one; they each get their own folder. If I get any unexpected mail, it's obvious where it came from and easy to deal with, though in practice this rarely happens.

[BeetleB]

> I've been doing this for years

Downloading email via POP or IMAP? Ever since I started using email in the 90's. I never deviated from it. In the old days, even the free mail hosts gave you POP access.

My own domain? Doing it for over 20 years.

[marssaxman]

Yep, pretty much the same story here. The only (relatively) recent innovation is the bit where mail sent to [e-mail] lands in a folder called "foo", so I neither have to sort out a messy inbox nor check many accounts individually.

[bigwheels]

As of last week, Google is on-track to discontinue POP-polling functionality. I've been using this for about 20 years, not sure what to do. What a pain.

Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP (support.google.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45439670 - 6 days ago, 372 comments

[pessimizer]

This is alarming if you just skim the headline (which I did, and was slightly alarmed), but it is about having gmail download from third-party accounts, not downloading emails from gmail. I don't think many people do this anyway, but I'm sure it was very convenient for some.

[layer8]

The caveat is that if your account gets banned, the IMAP access will also be blocked. An email forward is more likely to remain active, is the point made in TFA.

[marssaxman]

There is nobody but me who can ban my account. If the hosting service I rent my mail server from chose to drop me as a client, I could sign up with a different service, transfer the domain name, and keep on going with minimal disruption.