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> I think it's crazy that people walk around with phones that have access to years of email communications

You think its crazy in you wish you (and everyone else) had a viable alternative? Or, you think its crazy in that you do something else that others don't do?

If the latter, what do you do?

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I have tar files of old maildirs, but they're encrypted and backed up and not readily accessible. My regular mail client has access to a smaller set of mails. Of course this requires an email setup that allows such easy bulk operations, which gmail isn't really.

I have the same setup with gmail. It really wasn't that hard to export a chunk by date, upload it to tarsnap, and delete the originals

It seems like there is an inherent trade-off here between the usefulness and vulnerability of our systems.

Each feature we add for our own convenience makes a more tempting prize for a potential adversary.

Edit: Whether or not a particular feature/behaviour is reasonable or crazy depends entirely on the level of threat.

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