German Gmail Users: Backup Your Gmail Before Google Shuts it Down

Philipp Lenssen reports that Google may shut down Gmail in Germany because of new laws that require personally identifiable information for all email accounts. This would have a severe impact on user privacy that is against Google's policy to offer anonymous email accounts. Although this is an unlikely scenario, you might want to play it safe anyway.

To backup your Gmail account (previous coverage), we have recommended that you start immediately forwarding all your incoming email as a quick first step. You'll need to get into the Forward and Pop tab under Settings and set up an address to forward to.

To save your email to your computer, enable POP access under the same settings tab.

Then configure your email client with these settings:

Server Type: POP3
Email address: username@gmail.com (full address)
Incoming Mail Server (POP3): pop.gmail.com
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com
User Name: username@gmail.com (full address)
Password: your Gmail password
Incoming Server Port: 995, check SSL
Outgoing Server Port: 465, check SSL

Full details for your particular email client can be found here.