Changing your main email address - some questions?

[Paul_B]

A work IT security communication email came out as part of a security week thing going on. It was very interesting as it gave us various websites to go to check your online presence and threats. It was not aimed at work but at personal activities outside work. The one that I found most interesting was the "have I been pwned" website where you type your email(s) address(es) into it then it tells you IF it has been subject of a known threat, how many times and what the threat is. My first email address I typed in was my main address used for pretty much everything. I know that is not wise and it is better to have several email addresses for different uses. Still, since when do we do what we are supposed to, right??

Anyway, the summary is my main email address is pwned 10 times dating from 2018. My others are ok.

This means I really should change my main email address and change all my logons and online contacts to my new address or addresses. What a daunting task?!!! I mean who has actually kept a record of where they used their email address over the years? You buy in a shop and the assistance asks you "would you like a receipt emailed to you?" In a moment of distraction you have given that email address out. The receipt duly comes to you by email, gets read then deleted or forgotten about. Or you bought something from somewhere and your account for that onlline shop is with the email account. If you don't change it on that account you will have to set a new one up but you will lose all history (I do tend to buy things again if I like them so I do find an account with an online shop to be useful occasionally, very occasionally that is.

So can I ask if anyone has gone down this route and completely migrated from a longstanding and much used email address to a totally new account? How did it go? How did you go about it? Any tips?

I have also decided to create several accounts so I can use one for shopping, one for social media (just changed over to this on here and a few other forums I visit most regularly). Just to make things harder for myself but supposedly better in the longterm. I have not changed the main one though, just created the new ones for social media and shopping. I really do not know what to do about my main one. For pure security reasons I should change it over completely and a few months on close the old one completely. A few months to see if I get anything I have missed. This does worry me as I do not remember everything I have done online. I also wonder if a long lost contact wanted to contact me my email address no longer works after the cut off.

So I am curious as to what you people think about all this? I sound paranoid I think the way I am putting this, but I do think I need to take stock and make a few changes. I just cannot face doing what is needed to be done to close the old, main email address. Any advice or opinions on this action I am planning? Have you done this? How did you approach and do it?

One final thing is that my email addresses all includes an element of my name in it. This I have read is not wise as it is an extra information that could be used. I used a description with numbers and letters for my shopping and social media addresses. They are cumbersome and unweildy. I will never remember them. So how do you approach choosing your main email addresses? I am still working and I use my personal email for professional online accounts such as trade associations, Linkedin, etc. If using my name is out then what looks professional but is easy to remember (and not my dog or cat's names instead)? I have no imagination with this so curious as to what others do to think of when setting up a new email address. It needs to be a good look if used with a serious website but also memorable so you can give it out verbally when you really need to.

Over to you if you want to post about it (and have read this far).

 

[Chris]

A work IT security communication email came out as part of a security week thing going on. It was very interesting as it gave us various websites to go to check your online presence and threats. It was not aimed at work but at personal activities outside work. The one that I found most interesting was the "have I been pwned" website where you type your email(s) address(es) into it then it tells you IF it has been subject of a known threat, how many times and what the threat is. My first email address I typed in was my main address used for pretty much everything. I know that is not wise and it is better to have several email addresses for different uses. Still, since when do we do what we are supposed to, right??

Anyway, the summary is my main email address is pwned 10 times dating from 2018. My others are ok.

This means I really should change my main email address and change all my logons and online contacts to my new address or addresses. What a daunting task?!!! I mean who has actually kept a record of where they used their email address over the years? You buy in a shop and the assistance asks you "would you like a receipt emailed to you?" In a moment of distraction you have given that email address out. The receipt duly comes to you by email, gets read then deleted or forgotten about. Or you bought something from somewhere and your account for that onlline shop is with the email account. If you don't change it on that account you will have to set a new one up but you will lose all history (I do tend to buy things again if I like them so I do find an account with an online shop to be useful occasionally, very occasionally that is.

So can I ask if anyone has gone down this route and completely migrated from a longstanding and much used email address to a totally new account? How did it go? How did you go about it? Any tips?

I have also decided to create several accounts so I can use one for shopping, one for social media (just changed over to this on here and a few other forums I visit most regularly). Just to make things harder for myself but supposedly better in the longterm. I have not changed the main one though, just created the new ones for social media and shopping. I really do not know what to do about my main one. For pure security reasons I should change it over completely and a few months on close the old one completely. A few months to see if I get anything I have missed. This does worry me as I do not remember everything I have done online. I also wonder if a long lost contact wanted to contact me my email address no longer works after the cut off.

So I am curious as to what you people think about all this? I sound paranoid I think the way I am putting this, but I do think I need to take stock and make a few changes. I just cannot face doing what is needed to be done to close the old, main email address. Any advice or opinions on this action I am planning? Have you done this? How did you approach and do it?

One final thing is that my email addresses all includes an element of my name in it. This I have read is not wise as it is an extra information that could be used. I used a description with numbers and letters for my shopping and social media addresses. They are cumbersome and unweildy. I will never remember them. So how do you approach choosing your main email addresses? I am still working and I use my personal email for professional online accounts such as trade associations, Linkedin, etc. If using my name is out then what looks professional but is easy to remember (and not my dog or cat's names instead)? I have no imagination with this so curious as to what others do to think of when setting up a new email address. It needs to be a good look if used with a serious website but also memorable so you can give it out verbally when you really need to.

Over to you if you want to post about it (and have read this far).

haveibeenpwned is a great resource.

I have a ‘spam’ email that a give to forums, retailers and other places that require an email address, then I have a ‘core’ email address that I only use for sensitive stuff like banking and places I trust more seriously.

I use Proton, and this allows me to have something like 20 email aliases which come to my main mailbox, but the sender does not know my main email address, just the alias. If an alias gets compromised I can work out who compromised it and then delete that address and cut the link to that compromised info.

I’ve fully migrated a few times. Best thing is to leave the old address up and running (with 2 factor authentication and a STRONG password), then you can check if you forgot to move anything to your new address. It’s not that much of effort, really. Less than half a day just going and changing email addresses on websites.

 

[Chris]

PS - don’t delete your old email address. Keep control of it, or someone else will register it and then they have access to any account you had registered to that address.

 

[nigelp]

Best thing is to leave the old address up and running (with 2 factor authentication and a STRONG password),

This, and use a password manager to mange and create passwords. On iOS or macOS you are given the option to ‘hide your email’ when you sign up for newsletters or need an email for a store front etc.

 

[Broch]

Had to start from scratch when Virgin stopped supporting the @virgin.net email addresses last year. I'd used it for 25 years so it was an absolute pain. What's worse, virgin didn't bounce emails going to it so it was just a blackhole. The whole process took a lot of effort.

 

[Paul_B]

I ended up setting up an alias in microsoft. Gmaail does it too. Unlimited too AFAIK. However it just fed straight into my email address inbox without differentiation. So I ended up creating completely separate email accounts. A pain to do but it means that they come into the same email app as my main one but with differentiation. So I have the separate email in say gmail or other mail app. Then a combined email inbox for all my emails. Allows me to track back to the source of the issue. When I tried the alias in outlook it did not have a separate mailbox and I could not see where the email was sent to, the main or alias

 

[Chris]

In gmail you can use the trick as follows:

Imagine my address is chris@gmail

I go to sign up to BCUK and I enter chris+bcuk@gmail

Gmail ignores everything after the +, meaning any emails from bcuk will still be received in my chris@gmail inbox

But in the ‘to’ field it will still show chris+bcuk@gmail, meaning if I start getting spam emails and I can see the email was sent to chris+bcuk@gmail then I know who it is that leaked my data. And you can use any number of variations after the + so it’s in essence unlimited.