I completely feel and agree with you.
I use autobackups plugin to store backup every hour. At the end of the week I stubbornly manually compare current db export versus export that is being updated using MsgExport plugin into JSON to understand if anyone has gone from my database.
I also don't believe anyone else should have the right to manipulate data in miranda.
This is for example why I have my own miranda fork where I have deactivated deletion features (such as people on Discord being able to delete their own messages; not in my Miranda!). And also prevent user from deleting their entire history if they remove me from contact list (another unbeliveable local data manipulation... if user removes me, fine, but Miranda should not delete data it has for this user. It feels like somehow this user has power over my miranda and over data I have stored.
I too have data from... 2007+ stored in my miranda's database which is now around 500 megabytes almost, and this data is without a doubt the most important data on my computer. I have incremental backups that I maintain and check thoroughly, stored in multiple locations, I manually verify the data consistency every week.
Most people will say it's silly and well, maybe it is.
But to me, this is a huge, undeniable part of my life stored in this little program, and this is why I keep using it. I don't believe in servers, in cloud, in "someone else", when it comes to my own data. I only believe my own ways there.
So, I completely understand how you feel.
Maybe you want to start doing what I do.
Download and enable the MsgExport plugin and set it to auto export histories into JSON file.
Then have three folders.
One folder (call it CurrentData) is the current export folder, you will keep the ongoing data there. Second folder is the (LastSnapshot) "last time you compared" folder. And third folder is, say "CompData" for temporary comparison.
Now here is what I do.
At the end of every week, I take the exports from the LastSnapshot and delete them (I already have a full backup of the whole miranda directory for that week).
Then I take the contents of the CompData folder and move it to Last Snapshot.
Then I take the CurrentData contents and move it to CompData.
Then I restart miranda and do "export all" feature of MsgExport.
When done, I use total commander to compare CurrentData to CompData. All historical data must be the same. In general there should be very few differences. If you use Discord, then there will usually be differences for when someone edited their own message or posted a link, because the CompData folder will have those stored in separate messages whereas Currentdata will have it as a single message. But such difference is easy to spot. Sometimes the messages are a little reordered due to timestamps and out of order delivery, but that is also fine and easy to spot. But there must be no missing data in the previous content of the file. Moreover there must be no fewer files in the CurrentData folder when comapred to CompData. If there is, it means someone's contact data is missing. Maybe they deleted you and miranda deleted their data. Then you can go back using the AutoBackup plugin to see when you had their contact last, and save their data by converting them into a dummy, for example).
Anyway, at the end of the comparison, when I'm sure the Currentdata and CompData is the same (minus those things I mentioned above), I delete the contents of CompData and move the contents of CurrentData there.
Then, once more, I export all miranda history into txt into CurrentData, and I log back in. Now, the state is as follows:
LastSnapshot -> contents of last week's "CompData" folder.
CompData -> data you personally verified contains everything in your DB. Will become LastSnapshot next week.
Currentdata -> Same as CompData except once you log in and start chatting, new events will become appended to those files.
It's crazy I know. And it takes me about half an hour every week. I even funded one of the past developers to make the Msgexport plugin faster because previously it took like an hour to export my data
But after all the trouble with mdbx migration, discord deleting my messages and even icq, I think this is the only way to make sure your data is safe and exactly as it had been before.
So yeah.
I wish there was a setting in Miranda that would make it so that any kind of change that would cause deletion of data on _MY_ miranda side would be disabled...
