Most of us, including me, probably keep old emails in our inbox that contain important information/messages you don’t want to lose. Some of these old emails might contain usernames and passwords for some of your online accounts.
As you probably know, many services send new subscribers welcome emails containing the username and password needed to enter to log into the account. In most cases, they recommend changing the password once you have logged in, however not everyone follows those instructions.
If you still have those welcome emails with the “temporary password” that you never changed, your account is at risk. Any hacker that breaks into your mailbox will now have easy access to those accounts.
The best way to keep yourself safe is to delete any emails that contain passwords, usernames and “secret question” reminders as soon as they arrive (after you have retrieved the info from them of course). You should also go through all of your old emails and delete any that contain other types of sensitive info.
And of course it pays to protect your email account itself as much as possible by selecting a secure, yet easy to remember password or using a pass phrase and take advantage of multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Always try to think like the bad guy to stay one step ahead. You can never be too secure!
