[IAmBroom]

> After going through two layoffs, I realized I had the same painful problem both times: I lost all my: - contacts, - personal messages, - and important information that were tied to my company email.

> None of these were business-related — they were personal, and yet I had no way to recover them once my access was removed.

You are describing a problem in your ability to store your contacts, not any problem with retaining the emails themselves.

If I want to keep a contact, I send the information to my personal professional email. Done.

If I want to have a personal conversation, I intentionally shift it to my personal professional email - or at the very least, CC: or BCC: the same.

There's no need to violate security standards at my company, just to preserve the 0.01% of the information for myself.