Privacy fix: find and destroy old email accounts
“One of the main strategies I use to keep myself safe is to limit the number of things I have to pay attention to,” Guido explains.
The best way to do this? Delete any unused account. An inactive email account is a security hole you don’t need. In fact, finding and deleting all the old accounts you don’t use, from social media profiles to photo sharing sites, is one of the easiest ways to protect your privacy and security.
Deleting accounts on major services like Google, Yahoo, or AOL is usually straightforward, although you may have to wade through several settings pages to find the kill switch. If you don’t know how to do this, contact an administrator. Try messaging “admin” on your email domain name if all else fails.
If you don’t want to delete the account, take a few steps to give yourself a privacy boost. Some of the advice provided by security professionals is the same you’ll hear for every online account.
“Be sure to use a unique password for each service,” says Gendre. A password manager can make this project easier. If you don’t reuse passwords, you are not vulnerable to password stuffing.
Enabling two-factor authentication is also a critical step if that’s an option. With two-factor authentication, the services will send you a verification code, via text or app, to confirm your identity when someone tries to access your account from a location, device or from an unverified browser. This means that a password alone will not be enough to allow a criminal to log in.
Another strategy is to “devalue” the account to lessen the impact if something goes wrong. Guido recommends downloading all your old emails and clearing cloud data. This way, your personal information will not be available to online malefactors.
Similarly, you should separate old email addresses that you want to keep, but don’t check regularly, from any other service. If you are not monitoring an old inbox, you should not use it as a backup to reset the password of other important accounts.
“These assets need to be totally separate and isolated,” says Guido. “You want your digital life to be as simple as possible.”