Ghost Accounts: How Old, Forgotten Logins Put You at Risk for Identity Theft

Remember that website where you bought a T-shirt in 2013? No?

Hackers do. And it’s one way they can steal your personal info. 

Consider this website, and other forgotten sites like it, an example of a “Ghost Account,” a place where one of your long-unused logins lives on and puts your identity at risk. 

Ghosts aside, old accounts like these are very real.

Think of all the times you’ve created a one-off account to make a single purchase, take an online quiz, or get more information about an event or a sale. For all the accounts you remember, there are plenty more you’ve probably completely forgotten about.

Even as estimates vary, it’s likely the average person has somewhere between 100 to 200 online accounts, where varying degrees of their personal and financial info are stored. 

And all those accounts add up to plenty of exposure. Those companies still have your address, payment information, and other personal details in their system. 

In a time where data breaches of varying sizes hack 3.5 million accounts on average each day, the odds of an old account of yours getting compromised are higher than you may realize. The more places your info resides, the more exposure to risk you have, namely data breaches, which can quickly lead to identity theft and fraud.

Compounding the problem is human nature. People tend to reuse passwords, or use highly similar passwords, all in an effort to maintain some degree of sanity across all the accounts they’re juggling. Hackers love that too. With one password in hand, they potentially get the keys to several other accounts, also with varying levels of personal and financial info, which (again) can lead to identity theft and fraud.

How to track down and close old accounts

Our Online Account Cleanup can do the work for you, which you can find in all our McAfee+ plans. 

It finds and deletes old accounts to reduce your risk of data exposure. In our McAfee+ Ultimate plans, you get full-service Online Account Cleanup, which sends the data deletion requests for you.

With each scan, you get an all-up view of accounts in your name. From there, it shows which are riskiest to keep, along with a look at what personal info is typically included in those accounts, which helps you decide what you’d like to keep and what you’d like to delete. Again, with McAfee+ Ultimate, you can request to delete accounts with a single click.

And because you add accounts and passwords from time to time, Online Account Cleanup gives you a monthly report. That way, you can keep tabs on your ever-evolving list of accounts and delete any you don’t want over time.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget your passwords.

Yes, with all those accounts come passwords. While you’re cleaning up your old accounts, you can better protect the ones you keep with our Password Manager. It’s a simple and highly secure way you can create strong, unique passwords for each and every one of your accounts. That offers you yet one more line of defense against data breaches, because hackers know so many people reuse their passwords.

Lastly, it’s convenient. You only need to remember one password. Our password manager securely stores all your passwords, where one primary password grants access to them all.

Removing unused ghost accounts can make you far safer from identity crimes

Whether it’s for an old online gaming account, a streaming service you never use anymore, or a login for a doctor’s office you don’t visit anymore, delete it. The less personal and financial info you have sitting in a database somewhere is less info a hacker can steal and use to commit identity theft or fraud.

We all have our “ghosts” floating around online, and today you have an easy way to get rid of them for good.

Introducing McAfee+

Identity theft protection and privacy for your digital life.

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