Backup your Gmail/Email accounts automatically

Gmail is a crucial part of my life, Everything i have is there on gmail, Right from personal pics to office documents, Creditcard statements to bank accounts.
But one thing keeps me worried about my Gmail, What if I loose access to my account? What if some hacker manages to access to my gmail account and changes my password permanently?
I am sure this is the same question a lot of you will have in your mind, Whether it’s gmail,yahoo mail or hotmail. This is a common problem, I have lost a yahoo account once & it was almost impossible to gain  back  that account, I tried everything possible, but nothing worked & I was helpless . I lost few pics of my college friends which were special in a way, because that was our last day in college.

Anyways lets get back to the main point, How to backup Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail  basically any email account for free & automatically?
Before we begin, We need one gmail account and one email account from any other provider(Yahoo, Hotmail preferably ) so keep them handy.
If your primary account is on Gmail, Follow these steps :

1. Go to gmail.com and signin to your gmail account.
2. Click on “settings” or “gmail settings” in the right  hand side corner
3. Go to forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. or if you feel like skipping step 1,2,3;  Type this url in your browser https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#settings/fwdandpop
4. You will reach an interface that looks something like this.
   

   Click on the image to enlarge
5. Now click on the button that says “Add a forwarding Address”
6. The page will then direct you to add another email address of yours where you want to receive emails. (A link will be sent to your email address & you will have to click that)
7. Now after you have followed the procedure to forward the email automatically, check the radio button that says “Forward a copy of incoming mail to”
8. Now , select the option from the drop down menu that says, “Keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox.”
9. Save changes.

You are done . All your emails from now that will come to Gmail, will automatically be forwarded to your other email account, Free Backup you see:),
What about hotmail & yahoo users? you will ask, So here is what you need to do.

1. Create a gmail account where you want your backup to be downloaded,
2. Follow the steps given here Download emaisl to your gmail account from Yahoo , Hotmail & others
3. Once you are setup with step 2, your gmail account will automatically pull all the messages from other email accounts & what you get is free backup of all your emails.