How to Find Those Old Online Accounts You Don’t Remember
Cleaning up your online presence and deleting obsolete accounts
What do you think: How many online accounts do you have? Well, there is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, of course, Medium, MyFitnessPal, GitHub, Slack for work, oh and a couple of apps on your phone, maybe some accounts with some online shops…? But that‘s no more than 50, right?
Actually, that number is more likely in the hundreds. According to Dashlane, the average American had 150 online accounts in 2017, and they predicted that this number could reach 300 by 2022. It’s 2020 now, and each of us probably has more than 200 accounts—because of the ones we don’t even remember. Most of the online services and apps you use require an account setup. Even if you just want to quickly try something or look something up, you will create that account. And then forget about it. This forgetting-about-it part combined with weak and recycled passwords and companies selling your data creates significant security risks.
So it is important to be aware of the accounts you have, to delete the ones you don’t need or want anymore, to implement strong passwords and to think about what information you want to share. But how can you find those forgotten accounts? Below, I will share 8 steps so you can take back…
