Roger Matus asks this question on his “DeathbyEmail” blog.

Like it our not, our email inboxes have become the virtual filing cabinets of our lives. Most of our personal and business communication eventually travels through email, and lots of critical data ends up being stored in our mail boxes. Surprisingly, not many of us ever contemplate what would happen if that information were instantly and irretrievably lost.

BusinessWeek just published an article: “Web-Based E-Mail: Businesses Beware.” The subtitle: “Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and lots of others offer these free or low-cost services, but if there’s a snafu or e-mails with essential information are lost, you’re likely to be out of luck.”

The old adage “you get what you pay for” holds true for email as well. Many of the popular free or low-cost email services have had their fair share of data snafus. One ISP even lost the emails of 14,000 customers.

So if you enjoy the convenience and the “price” of any of these free email accounts, plan for contingencies and please make a backup. This could be as simple as syncing a local copy with a free desktop email client such as Thunderbird via POP.