Flashback to 2011: Email Accounts Maintenance

Below flashes back to my January 2, 2011, post on email accounts maintenance.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Email Accounts Maintenance

Too many email accounts?


I dumped one email account today. Which brings me down to eleven. How'd I get so many email accounts? I've got:

1. The one with my real name that I use professionally;
2. The one I use for newspaper and other media registration so I can submit online commentary;
3. The one I use for a flickr account;
4. The two "stupid" accounts I set up with two different providers for when I am on the road;
5. The one I set up to join a listserv and maintain anonymity;
6. The one I had to set up with a particular provider so I could join a group related to the listserv;
7. The one I set up to replace the one google shut down, only to regain the earlier one just a few days after I created the replacement account;
8. The one I use with facebook
9. The one I use for administrative stuff; and
10. The one I set up for a genealogical archive, which I'll hand off one day.

It's absurd. Can I be rootless with so many email accounts? Does having 11 email accounts fall into the too-much-stuff category? I don't know  Probably yes Yes, but I'm not ready today to delete any more than the one I released today. Perhaps tomorrow.

Here's what some others have to say on the topic:

• From techspot.com, WOF: How Many Email Accounts Do You Use? I especially like the commenter with 79 accounts. 
•  A Mozillazine forum discussion here

You can also get a 10-minute email account. Genius.

Account maintenance today

I made sure every account had a designated password-recovery account the provider can send a password reset email to.

I reviewed all of the passwords to make sure they were strong, but still simple for me to remember. I changed many of them.

Or you can go here to find out how long it would take for a "brute assault," using computers, to crack your password. It's suggested you not enter the exact password you use or intend to use. The site's owner, Eric Wolfram, writes this interesting article about good passwords.[2020 update: Go here for what I believe is the current best practice for most of us - passphrases instead of passwords.]

From howsecureismypassword.net