home server Taking back control of my data and need help with calendar, contacts, email, etc...

[kurzonmorris]

Great idea for a video on taking back control of my data or securing my data. very much up LTT street.

 

 

Okay I screwed up and my outlook account was hacked and while i got my money back i lost pretty much everything else. all my files including photos of my dead son. I lost not only my emails but also the email address's as well (thank god its not a work email, *shudder* my contacts and my calendar oh and my uni work(though i have no use for it now it still sucks) I managed to rescue some stuff as some of it was on different drives around my machines.

 

anyway to the thing i need help on

 

I have been bitten and now i want to control my data as best as possible. I want to house or at least have a downloaded copy of all my essentials. Here is a list of things I want to house on my home server i'm building with either an online copy or constant access to it. I prefer the idea that the main Information is housed on my server and there is a copy online which I can access anywhere. that way if something happens at home then i got a copy on something like google and a backup on my file storage. 

 

basicly i want 3 copies of all my information, Home, website and online backup. (eventually i intend to have a 4th copy in an offsite backup location like my parents house)

Currently the list of important things I need help with are

 

Email Access/storage: (also like the idea of emails coming dirrect to me instead of online service but I fear things like power cuts would make that less a good idea) Currently my domain is with godaddy and my hosting is with hostpapa and i can download a backup copy of my emails from there. I have my emails downloaded to thunderbird app. This gives me 2 copies and i can arrange to manualy download it for backup purposes. Is there a better solution?

 

Contacts: Since I lost my contacts its been hard to function and i'm currently using the contacts CardDav that part of my hostpapa email. It currently downloads to thunderbird but I cant find a program thats free on android for my phone so I need a better solution. again i want to access my contacts on my pc, phone and have my normal backups.

 

Calendar: well loosing my calendar data actually cost me money I missed out on so many appointments and software renewals that is not a joke. I'm currently using my wife's callendar but my email hostpapa also has CalDav which is supposed to be a calendar server i can access anywhere, except i only got it working on thunderbird.

 

Tasks: I don't use tasks as much as I want simply because i have had so many problems accessing them on different devices quickly.

 

as you may have noticed i user thunderbird alot and i love the app on my pc and steam deck(main portable device, I use the desktop mode primarily and it works great) however they are still working on a mobile app and have joined with another app developer but its going to be time before its all sorted.

 

so please help me secure my data and files. I currently use a file storage site called Currys Cloud Backup. I think they use livedrive as there software (not sure) anyway i like the cost and the speed is okay, just wish it had a linux program.

 

so to reiterate I need software that works on android, windows/linus(mac too for anyone else) a website backup like google/outlook (though out of principle i refuse to let micrososft have any more data of mine cause of the way they screwed me over) and server software for the server i'm building. (I havent decided what OS I'm going to use on the server yet, hell I'm not even sure if its going to be a raspberri pi or an old pc yet.)

 

anyway any and all help would be greatly appreciated

 

Kuzon

[SpookyCitrus]

What version of Outlook do you have? Newer versions should keep backups with your Microsoft account in the cloud which is bad if the whole account get's hacked, or you can on new and on older versions you can save your Outlook profile as a .PST file. It saves a backup of everything all you have to do is export your Outlook .PST file and it's a backup file you can save on any drive, they can be fairly large depending on the amount of emails you have though. The Outlook .PST can be imported to the Outlook version of the same build or any one newer, it can also be imported into other email clients like thunderbird as well. The next thing you could look into is just doing image backups of the whole PC, that will keep everything programs, settings, files. A complete image backup of the OS and everything will keep all of that plus anything else on the computer you have set up. As for server ideas I mean really just setting up a Nas with like a Cloudberry backup setup is a good way to keep stuff like that.

[kurzonmorris]

1 hour ago, SpookyCitrus said:

What version of Outlook do you have? Newer versions should keep backups with your Microsoft account in the cloud which is bad if the whole account get's hacked, or you can on new and on older versions you can save your Outlook profile as a .PST file. It saves a backup of everything all you have to do is export your Outlook .PST file and it's a backup file you can save on any drive, they can be fairly large depending on the amount of emails you have though. The Outlook .PST can be imported to the Outlook version of the same build or any one newer, it can also be imported into other email clients like thunderbird as well. The next thing you could look into is just doing image backups of the whole PC, that will keep everything programs, settings, files. A complete image backup of the OS and everything will keep all of that plus anything else on the computer you have set up. As for server ideas I mean really just setting up a Nas with like a Cloudberry backup setup is a good way to keep stuff like that.

i have previously used outlook.com, and now everytime i use anything microsoft it reminds me of how they treated me so i really dont want to use them for anything if i can get away with it, childish i know but f**K microsoft.

 

this is why i want apps to show my calendar, contacts and email.

[Roswell]

2 hours ago, kurzonmorris said:

Okay I screwed up and my outlook account was hacked and while i got my money back i lost pretty much everything else. all my files including photos of my dead son. I lost not only my emails but also the email address's as well (thank god its not a work email, *shudder* my contacts and my calendar oh and my uni work(though i have no use for it now it still sucks) I managed to rescue some stuff as some of it was on different drives around my machines.

All of that should be recoverable... You just need to contact them for access back to the account. Files in online storage aren't really deleted until a significant amount of time has passed. There's user facing options to undelete. I doubt hackers sending spam would bother wiping your contact list/calendar. Regardless, if they did and the account was closed, any device that previously synced to the account would still have a local copy of all of that stuff.

 

It sounds more like Microsoft banned your account for ToS reasons/illegal activity instead of it getting "hacked"?

[SpookyCitrus]

15 hours ago, kurzonmorris said:

i have previously used outlook.com, and now everytime i use anything microsoft it reminds me of how they treated me so i really dont want to use them for anything if i can get away with it, childish i know but f**K microsoft.

 

this is why i want apps to show my calendar, contacts and email.

Mozilla Thunderbird is essentially a free version of Outlook, so if you don't want to use Outlook anymore you can try that. Most Email Client apps are going to have those features. Otherwise just use Gmail, it has all of that and is browser based so it's saved on their end. Pair it with Google Photos and backup, it's all accessible between devices and all saved in the cloud, with backups and restore points if you were to accidentally delete anything.