What would happen if you couldn’t access your account, it was switched off and you lost emails – all of them?
This has recently happened to me.
I’ve taken this ‘opportunity’ to make sure that you know what you need to be doing – going forward.
We Don’t Own Our Emails
It’s a sad fact of our digital lives, that we only rent so much of what we use daily.
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Email.
The companies that do own and run these services basically have total control.
They could turn things off at any time.
While they probably won’t, we can’t take that for granted.
My Sad Tale
I’ve had an internet connection for years – starting well into last century with dial-up.
If you don’t remember the old “strangled-cat noise”, then don’t worry about it.
The account and email address that was first created has been with me ever since.
That is – up to the beginning of Sept – Thu 2nd to be precise.
That evening I noticed that my account was showing an error message – that it couldn’t connect.
The following day I called and was told that my email, in fact all of the accounts with the same domain (after the @) had been turned off, terminated and could not be recovered.
PANIC!
That’s the address I’ve been using for most things, my brain went into melt down.
All of the information…
All the accounts that use that email…
Everything – gone!
A New Beginning
Without any other option, I created a new free email account.
Then reality set in… my lost emails had receipts, account information, and information that I’ve gathered over the years.
As my main email address it’s the one that I had given out and used to setup/login into countless other accounts.
Then came the hard work – remembering/finding all of the accounts that I created using the ‘old’ email address.
Places to check:
- Your Memory
- Social Media
- Professional and Personal Membership
- Web browser – recently viewed pages (History)
- Web browser – saved passwords
- Securely stored account details and passwords
- Written notes
For each of these I had to go to the website, login into the account and see if I could change that email address.
Most, fortunately I could.
There were quite a few that I couldn’t – however a quick email explaining the situation to the help/support address and they updated their records for me.
I’m still finding accounts and information that needs to be updated, and I’m sure that this will continue for a while more.
I’ve written a free Email Infographic with 3 quick tips to help you avoid the problems that I had.
More information and suggestions are available with my eBook – Diversify Your Email
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Diversify Your Emails£9.00
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2 thoughts on “What would happen if you lost your emails?”
We are in danger of conflating two related but different issues here, both of which require solutions.
The first is the potential loss of e-mails. So you log on to your e-mail account but find it empty. All of your historic e-mails have disappeared, whether deleted in error by your e-mail provider, deleted in error by you or deleted maliciously by a hacker.
I think that I have this covered. All of my various e-mail accounts are backed up contemporaneously as all messages are forwarded to a different e-mail account with a different provider. I then make an offline backup of the backup account on a monthly basis by creating an Outlook Data File (.pst) which I store on external hard drives.
The second issue is the possible loss of the account going forward and its use to log in to other online accounts. I am still pondering a solution to this issue, if there actually is one. So thank you for describing your experience as forewarned is forearmed !
Hi Paul,
Thanks for sharing how you backup your emails – that’s quite a robust system.
In terms of the accounts – I’m not sure what you can do.
the biggest problem is the ones that want to send you a code to the verified email when you can’t access it.
Michelle
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