Your forgotten email accounts are more dangerous than you think

A forgotten email account isn’t a harmless relic from past online times, but a potential gateway to your digital identity. As long as it exists, it remains accessible—not just to you, but also to hackers.

Almost every online service uses email addresses as an anchor point. Anyone who has access to your mailbox can, for example, use the “forgot password” function to take over other linked accounts via a chain reaction. Hackers love inactive email accounts because hardly anyone looks at them...