This is a good place to remind everyone of Google Takeout [1]. Back up all of your data. Don't let this horror story happen to you.
There's a new checkbox in takeout that lets you schedule a backup every 2 months (and then presumably you'll get an email when you need to download it).
Does anyone else have issues with takeout failing with "unknown error occurred" if you use the default of selecting all products? I have to manually create multiple takeout archives (one for gmail, one for photos, one for location history...)
> With access to your XXX@YYY.ZZZ Box account, Google Download Your Data can:
> Read and write all files and folders stored in Box
Nope. Download link it is.
The API scope doesn't have any knowledge of individual files or applications. https://developer.box.com/docs/scopes
Conversely, Google Drive does have scopes available for Application specific folder read/write https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/appdata
So box needs to up its game.
One caveat: I'm not certain that it's identical to what Takeout provides. I downloaded the mbox file via Takeout and the Takeout version was a fair bit larger than my Thunderbird mbox file as I recall. Maybe Thunderbird stores the emails more efficiently than Takeout? I should examine this more closely. As far as I am aware there are no missing emails in Thunderbird, though I could write a script to be certain.
Edit: Seems that I misremembered. The Takeout file seems to be appreciably smaller than what Thunderbird has, but in line with what Gmail reports at the bottom. I guess Thunderbird is actually less efficient than Gmail. Attachments might explain some of this, as I deleted some attachments in Gmail that I kept in Thunderbird.